This article is about the 110th anniversary of the invention of the level-wind baitcasting reel. Had I known that ten years ago, I probably would have written it up for its centenary. Actually I think maybe I did. Doesn’t matter, there’s more to the story. 

The level-winding device, still standard fare amongst everything from tiny baitcasters to some massive electric boat reels, is born out of the design that William Shakespeare Jr patented in 1897, after perfecting it over five years. He was a smart man who was very lucky to be born at all; his father was Michigan’s youngest soldier to fight in the Civil War, and had reached the rank of Brigadier General by the age of 19. That’s what they do for you when you’re dying on the battlefield, apparently – but he survived multiple bullet wounds and ten months in an 1860s hospital. It’s quite a story in its own right. 

Apart from having a name that made most of the western world stop and think for a moment, William Shakespeare Jr was born, and stayed, in a town called Kalamazoo, in Michigan. Nobody knows how the town got its name, but now you know how the Shakespeare Company came to be in the business of making fishing reels. 

Actually for the first 18 years, it was The William Shakespeare Jr Company, but he shortened it in 1915. Despite the interruption of a war and a patriotic deviation into making fuses and carburettors, by 1920 Shakespeare had 5000 tackle dealers selling his reels in the USA. Heady days. 

He actually got the idea for his reel level-wind design from his socks one day in the early 1890s; and later admitted to it! He was sitting on the edge of his bed pulling off an argyle sock, one with the diamond pattern, when his mind connected the design with a mechanical possibility. Soon he was turning that design in brass and steel. He is quoted later in a newspaper interview as saying, “It seems senseless, perhaps, to mention the sock, but very likely men who call themselves psychologists would say that it was important." 

Other level-wind devices had actually been patented as much as 40 years earlier, but none had been successful, and all were discarded once Shakespeare’s invention reached the market, if they hadn’t been already. 

The level-wind reels Shakespeare produced in 1904 sold for US$35 - about the cost of a good horse. The reels were a break-even proposition at that, due to the amount of handcrafting. The company made its money from lures, another product area in which Shakespeare had a plethora of patents. 

To give credit where it’s due, the level-wind design that has been used by all and sundry for the last hundred years – a single endless-thread carriage screw (Shakespeare’s patent was for a double carriage screw), looped wire line guide and slotted shaft to support the top of the line guide – was invented by Shakespeare employee Walter Marhoff in 1907. He died the next year, aged 39; but Shakespeare, who had manufactured the Marhoff Reel for only two years, continued to produce the reel virtually unchanged for the next 40 years. 

Bill Jr wasn’t one to rest on his laurels, apparently. He was a fisherman himself, and not entirely satisfied with his product. It took him a few more years, but in 1939 he patented not only a two-speed overhead reel, but also released the Wondereel, which featured a decent drag, and Shakespeare’s new Backlash Brake - essentially the same adjustment cap cast control still commonplace on casting overheads today. 

Another war saw Shakespeare into making controls for military machinery, but when that was all over in 1946, they really hit their straps. New technology materials had them in the business of braided and monofilament nylon lines, and making fly lines. Fibreglass was about to take over from wooden, steel and bamboo rods, and Shakespeare were on the scene right at the start. They had been making bamboo rods since 1905, but there was still plenty of future in the fishing rod business. 

In 1947, with Henry Shakespeare (the son) in charge and the company celebrating 50 years, they introduced two more icon products: the President baitcasting reel, and the world’s first fibreglass fishing rod, the patented Howald Glastik Wonderod, which also saw the name Dr Arthur M. Howald appear on the scene. The baitcasting rods sold for US$60, at a time when bamboo rods sold for $15. Shakespeare reportedly invested US$1 million in setting up to manufacture Howald’s fibreglass rods, a massive gamble on a totally unproven product, but one which revolutionised the fishing rod business worldwide in a matter of months. 

Howald’s manufacturing technique was to have almost as much impact on the world’s fishing rod market as fibreglass did, though not for another 29 years. 

William Shakespeare Jr passed away in June 1950. Henry steered a growing ship through new factories, acquisitions and foreign offices until 1965, by which time Shakespeare was into spinning reels and was a leader in fibreglass technology. He remained as chairman of the board, but was the last family member to run the company. 

The next year Shakespeare purchased the Pflueger company, a reel manufacturer since 1881, and a name which is still closely allied to Shakespeare now. Their history together dates back to 1913, when William Jr had battled them in court over a lure patent dispute, which he won. 

Arthur Howald’s patented concept for making fibreglass rod blanks, widely known as the Howald Process, remained unique to Shakespeare for some time. In the early ‘70s, when graphite first became available to the tackle industry, most manufacturers used the same blank rolling process that they used with fibreglass, which was flags of material rolled around a tapered mandrel. 

The early days of graphite saw plenty of these rods break, as the material was not high quality and still needed a lot of development. However Shakespeare ran with the Howald Process, which required a spiralled graphite core, providing plenty of hoop strength, and extruded fibreglass over the outside, which finished in a solid fibreglass tip. This rod, unlike most part-graphite rods of the day, was tough as nails and almost impossible to break. It wasn’t pretty, but it was demonstrably strong. Shakespeare released it onto the market in 1976 as the Ugly Stik. 

It was the next big thing and, very remarkably, 30 years on it remains Shakespeare’s flagship product; the best-selling rod range of all time, the most-copied rod of all time, and still as tough as ever. 

Earlier this year I visited the factory in China where most Shakespeare rods now hail from (they do still manufacture some rods in the USA, mainly for the domestic bass market, but the realities of a worldwide economy means that for most tackle, China is currently the place to be manufacturing). 

I’ve done my share of rod building, and I reckon I know how to do most of it. It was pretty interesting watching the rod binders at Shakespeare’s factory putting the diamond wrap on a made-for-Australia Ugly Stik Platinum rod; I knew what that girl was doing, I knew the sequence that it had to be done in, I’ve done it myself, yet she worked so fast my brain could not keep up with what my eyes were seeing - and I knew what I was looking at. Amazing. 

Production schedules are kept that require all processes to be timed, and as an indicator of what one of these rod binders can achieve, consider the elaborate butt wrap on an Ugly Stik Custom series; in the USA, that rod’s designer needed a minimum of 45 minutes to achieve that butt wrap. The best rod binder at the China factory could do it in 18 minutes.

The rod lathes were also significantly different from what we’re used to using; the chuck was out in front of the binder, and moved towards or away from the binder as required; rather than the left-to-right arrangement we have always seen. 

Production of Ugly Stiks is now greater than ever, an amazing feat for a 30-year-old concept in fishing tackle. The factory where the accompanying photos were taken produces 11 million rods each year, of which about two-thirds are Ugly Stiks. 

That million spent back in 1947 probably gave them some sleepless nights at the time, too.  

How a broken bamboo rod revolutionised fishing
 
While writing this column I became aware that although the history on 110 years of Shakespeare was very complete, the history of Dr Arthur M. Howald was not so apparent. I contacted his son, Dr Reed Howald, Professor Emeritus (retired) at the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Montana State University, who kindly provided the following information. 

I can supply a few details, both before and after 1947. I was myself an important cog in the story, since I was involved in stepping on a bamboo rod which my sister and I left on a gravel bar to play something else. In any case my father was short of rods during the war, when replacement bamboo rods were not available. He was at that time director of research for the Plaskon Company, a Toledo company set up during the depression to commercialise the urea-formaldehyde plastic which he had invented. 

During the war they were working with glass fibre reinforced alkyd resin, and he decided to try that material to repair one of the broken bamboo rods. It worked. He thought that it would be possible to build a complete rod from this material, and tried that. The Plaskon Company patented it. 

But to try out the rod blank that he made, he needed fittings. He got those from the Shakespeare Company. At that time they made only reels, and sold rods with the Shakespeare name made by other companies. But they were interested in building a rod factory, and licensed the Howald process. 

By that time father had built a great many fly rods by hand, finally getting a rod action that he felt was better than a good bamboo rod. But Shakespeare wouldn’t consider investing in this unless they had a casting rod design as well. So father had to try that. I think he bought a steel casting rod, and attempted to match its strength. Anyhow the first attempt on a casting rod was deemed satisfactory to go into production. 

Father continued as a consultant for the Shakespeare Company for many years, mostly designing and testing rods. However he also worked on fishing lines and leaders for them. One piece of his agreement with them was that he was to get a sample of every rod design that they put into production. Those, and also many experimental models kept him and me in fly rods as long as he lived. This included the first carbon fibre rods made by the Shakespeare Company. 

Sincerely,
REED HOWALD

Copyright © Hal Harvey