Browsing around the interweb & found some of this. One thing lead to another...
Interesting how old some of these power tools are & how many brand names are still about.
Electric Drill
1895 the first hand held portable electric drill was developed by the German brothers Wilhelm & Carl Fein in Stuttgart.By 1917, Black & Decker had patented a trigger-like switch, which was mounted on a pistol-grip handle to turn the portable electric drill on & off.
Circular Saw The worm-drive portable circular saw was invented in 1923 by Edmond Michel. In 1924 Michel formed a partnership with Joseph Sullivan, and together they started the Michel Electric Handsaw Company, with the sole purpose of manufacturing and marketing the saw invented by Michel. The company later renamed itself Skilsaw Inc., which today is a subsidiary of Robert Bosch GmbH.
Jigsaw In 1947, Scintilla started producing jigsaws under name "Lesto jigsaw". In 1954 Scintilla was acquired by Bosch and in 1964 the name "Lesto" was replaced with Bosch. In 1966 Bosch added the pendulum action to the blade movement and in 1989 it added the tool-less blade replacement device.
Cordless Drill In 1961, Black and Decker invented cordless power tools.
Router The plunge router, invented by ELU (now part of DeWalt) in Germany in the late 1940s.
Planer In 1958, Makita Corporation, which was founded in 1915 as an electric motor sales and repair company, became the first company in Japan to manufacture and sell electric planers.
Angle Grinder In 1922, Hermann Ackermann and Hermann Schmitt started a company in Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt to produce and sell their new invention: the MS
6 hand-held grinding machine, featuring an electrical motor that drove a flexible shaft. This feature was the inspiration for this brand-new tool's name: Flex .In the late 1920s, the engineers succeed in replacing the flexible shaft with an angle gear set. This was the world's first angle grinder, also sold under the brand name Flex. Flex started becoming established as a new word.