The Small Inventions That Make a Huge Difference

Universally necessary, drywall is a building basic. As a result, so too is the drywall screw.

For every 125 square feet of drywall (aka sheetrock) we needed 125 screws. In addition, Yahoo tells us that the U.S. consumed close to 28 billion square feet of drywall during 2024. The screws needed to install that drywall could have weighed close to half a billion pounds.

A small invention, the drywall screw makes a huge difference.

Small Inventions

As a small invention, drywall screws remind us of nails, wheels, springs, and strings.

To really understand the nail, we have to go to a forge in ancient Rome where we would see the heat and shaping it required. Also long ago, in Mesopotamia, the first wheel had nothing to do with transport. As a potter’s device, it made vessels that stored food. Then, perhaps two thousand years later, someone reinvented the wheel and attached it to a cart.

Next, we can add the spring and a twisted string. With the energy to propel something else, springs can be as big as a bow and arrow or in a small watch. Similarly, strings seem like nothing until they become the twisted metal that suspend bridges.

Our Bottom Line: Private and Social Return

Long ago, Edwin Mansfield (1930-1997), a University of Pennsylvania economist, said that a seemingly small invention can have a large impact. While he was referring to manufacturing inputs like thread, he could easily have been talking about one of our small inventions. As Mansfield explained, at first an innovation benefits its developer. But then, from there, some innovations go big.

Rippling across millions of individuals, the social return of a small invention–like a drywall screw–creates the positive externalities that bring the benefits of big buildings.

Frequently hidden, small inventions make a visible difference.

My sources and more: While this NY Times article primarily focused on screws, Yahoo conveyed more of the tariff connection. Then, this 99% Invisible podcast took us to Roma Agrawal’s 2023 book on small inventions.

Please note that several of today’s sentences were in a past econlife post. We should also note that our NY Times and Yahoo articles emphasized the negative externalities created by tariffs on drywall screws that come from Taiwan. But we will save that discussion for the future.