I feel this is rather gimmick-y, and cannot find a better place to post it in the index.
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GB patent 497450 was granted to Harry Millward of Birmingham on December 20, 1938, for a mechanic's square that permitted multiple configurations. The patent explains how the tool may be used as a square, a bevel gauge, a depth or height gauge, a scriber (two ways!), and a caliper.
(
It’s a shirt. It's a sock. It's a glove. It's a hat. But it has other uses. Yes, far beyond that.)
This is a 4" square, and there are both 4" and
6" versions floating around the internet. Some (like this one) are only marked "MADE IN ENGLAND / PAT. No 497450". Some are marked "H.M.M. Ltd / MADE IN ENGLAND / PAT. No 497450" and some are marked "A MILMET PRODUCT / MADE IN ENGLAND" with no patent number.
Additionally, some squares which are
not this thing--which are just sensible squares--are marked with
H.M.M. Ltd and the patent number.
I can't find anything about H.M.M. Ltd (although I freely confess I did not do a deep dive into UK company registration), or about Milmet (there is a Millenium Metals that has a
https://www.milmet.co.za/ URL, but they were established in 1999). I'd guess Harry Millward spent some time having his tool distributed by himself as H.M.M. (
Harold
Millward
Manufacturing/
Metalworking) Ltd., and it later as a MILMET (
Millward
Metalworking?) product.
The lack of patent numbers on the Milmet tools suggest that they're made later (1953 if the patent had actually expired?), but the above-mentioned presence of the patent number on a plain square suggests that quality control may have been a bit slapdash, so I wouldn't bet on that.
One of the
threads I found discussing this called them "hmm squares", and searching for hmm squares and/or hmm ltd squares seemed to give me slightly better results that searching for milmet squares, but either seems to work.
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