Two young entrepreneurs, S. Duncan Black and Alonzo G. Decker, founded a small machine shop in Baltimore, Maryland. They called it The Black & Decker Manufacturing Company. Their shop has grown beyond anything they could have imagined.

In the fall of 1910, Duncan Black and Alonzo Decker invested $1,200 in a dream of making specialized machinery. Their first shop was on Calvert Street in a Baltimore industrial district. Their product line, manufactured under contract for other companies, was diversified. It included a milk bottle cap machine, a lettergraph, a vest pocket adding machine, a postage stamp splitting and coiling machine, machinery for the U.S. Mint, a candy-dipping machine, a shock absorber, and a cotton picker.

Today, Black & Decker is a global marketer and manufacturer of quality products used in and around the home and for commercial applications. It is also a major supplier of information systems and services to government and commercial client’s world-wide. With products marketed in over 100 countries and approximately half of its revenues from outside the United States, Black & Decker's product lines hold leading market share positions in their industries.