Hopper Tools Buffalo NY

[3baygarage]

These are two pieces I found locally and know nothing about their history.


Hopper mini 4 way 6 point socket wrench marked Buffalo, 24 NY.

24 must be an old postal zone.

1/4 drive Hopper ratchet / flat blade screwdriver marked West Seneca, NY (suburb of Buffalo).


Does anyone have any to add or know of any information?

 

[3baygarage]

Similar yet different than good old Meteor.

After comparing tooth count, the Hopper seems to be 12 and the Meteor is a little wacky but feels like 15.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

24 must be an old postal zone.

It is. It falls roughly between Gardenville, Blossom, and West Seneca. All of the pre-Zip Code postal zones were embedded in Zip Codes. Zip Codes essentially added three digits in front of the old postal zones.

I'll try to get my Google-fu on Hopper itself going a little later.

 

[3baygarage]

Ahh , so that would have become W. Seneca 14224 I take it.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

Yes.

I backed into this knowledge when doing research on my King Pressed Steel & Manufacturing (later known as Newton Pressed Steel & Manufacturing) socket sets. Their address was 58 Boston. It was the Newton area, which now is its own town with the zip code 02458.

Tangentially, I also discovered at the same time that the widespread conventional wisdom in the collecting world (and not just the tool collecting world) about postal codes being invented during WWII is erroneous. They existing long before WWII. They show up in all kinds of historical dated documents as early as the 1920's.

 

[four.cycle]

Not sure what link I clicked to get here, but I find nothing on "Hopper" in West Seneca other than:
Clarence Hopper, a band leader
J.L. Hopper (formerly of the American Brake Shoe & Foundry Co.) hired by the Washburn Co. to be a sales representative in Chicago.

Is it possible those units were outsourced from other manufacturers and stamped "Hopper" for some hardware store, or satellite phone company? (The ratchet definitely looks similar to a General or Meteor, and I've seen lots of those 4-way socket wrenches stamped with various names on them, including "General Electric".)