In this video, I look at one of Stanley Hand Tools more popular products.
I remember my Grandpa Kirk had a wooden ruler that folded up every six inches. He carried it around in his shirt pocket. I believe they were ten or twelve feet long. They were great as long as you were very careful with them. Being wood, they would break very easily. Grandpa was a civil engineer and he had a metal tape rule 100 feet long that had a wooden handle and a crank on the side to rewind it. All I remember about it was that it was very heavy and I wasn't allowed near it!
That wooden ruler really was the forerunner of today's tape measures and tape rules that our tool boxes can we without! We have just modernized that wooden ruler and made today's tape measures much lighter and easier to carry around. If you are the average homeowner, you really don't need a tape rule that is more than twenty five feet. In fact, of the three I own and are in the tool box or van, two are twenty five feet long and one is thirty feet long.