J. H. Williams & Co. was founded in 1882 in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn, New York. The company's first patents, credited to William H. Brock, were for chain pipe wrenches. James H. Williams and William H. Brock became partners in 1885, and remained so until 1895, although the relationship appears to have been rocky from the start; Brock sued Williams only a year into their partnership. From the beginning, J. H. Williams & Co. excelled in drop-forged wrenches, in which white-hot molten steel is hammered by mechanical force between two dies, reheated, and then pressed again as many as 20 times, before the edges of the tool being manufactured—the gap where the two dies meet—is trimmed and finished. In the 1890s, the company also manufactured drop-forged golf-club heads and irons in a range of styles and sizes, but tools were its forte. James Williams, who died in 1904, appeared to care more about the workers in his employ than many other industrialists of his era. His brick buildings were designed and operated to prevent destruction and deadly fires, which were all too common in enclosed spaces where fuel and hot steel are in close proximity. For example, stairways were situated on the outside of Williams' buildings, preventing stairwells from becoming chimneys in the case of a conflagration. Williams also provided his employees with cold showers for cooling off after a morning of working around the hot forges, and the company even offered workers voluntary membership in a "mutual aid society," which compensated them in case of illness or injury. Some years later, in 1919, a trade publication would take the firm's Buffalo branch to task for not being as enlightened in its treatment of its employees as the branches in Brooklyn. As for the tools manufactured by Williams, open-end wrenches were the company's bread and butter. The earliest of these had the letter "W" set within a diamond forged into their handles. While some of these handles were straight, others were curved into "S" shapes. Williams made wrenches for early 20th-century car manufacturers such as Pierce Arrow, whose wrenches featured the word "Pierce" on them, with a left-to-right arrow running through the lettering. In fact, Williams made scores of wrenches with thin handles designed for use by automobile mechanics working in tight places. For example, some had sharply angled heads and were stamped with the words "Brake Adjustment" on the handles, while others featured box ends at a right angle to the shank so that spark plugs could be installed and removed. By at least 1910, Williams began to brand its tools with catchy names. One of the first of these was Ratcho, which was the brand given to its wrenches that were notched on one side of their U-shaped open ends. By the 1920s, Williams had begun selling a line of long-handled, alloy steel tappet wrenches called Superrench, the first of several Super"products—later, Williams adjustable wrenches were branded as Superjustable. As Chrome-Molybdenum became an alloy of choice for Williams, that, too, was stamped onto the handles of Superrenches, some of which had angled heads to make it easy for mechanics to work around obstructions. Naturally, Williams also jumped on the socket and ratchet bandwagons, with all their accompanying extensions and tool boxes. Williams also made hammers, pliers, and offset screwdrivers.