On July 14, 1868, Alvin J. Fellows of New Haven, Connecticut filed a patent for the first attempt at a spring tape measure.
On July 14, 1868, the design of a spring measuring tape in a circular case was patented by a man named, Alvin J. Fellows of New Haven, Connecticut.
Many years later on January 3, 1922, Hiram A. Farrand received his patent filed in 1919 for a spring tape measure. Over the next few years, he and William Wentworth Brown of Brown Company in Berlin, New Hampshire began mass-producing the tape measure. It was later sold to Stanley Works.
Hiram A. Farrand with the Farrand Rapid Rule
First Night History 