The company was founded in Maikammer, Germany in 1820 by Gustav Ullrich, and carried on by his sons through the mid-19th century.

It was a time of change. Like England and America, Germany was in the midst of the industrial revolution, and invention was in the air. Germans, it seems, have long been driven by a passion to find a better and more perfect solution to all their crafts and industries. Germany had been at the forefront of invention since the time of Johannes Guttenberg, who, tinkering in his printing shop in Mainz, invented movable type and changed the world.

It is not surprising that in 1851, when Anton Ullrich took over the family business, he put his mind to better tools for measuring and ruling. As industry and technology rapidly advanced, STABILA would supply new, innovative and accurate measuring tools to Germany and the world.

As he watched a carpenter create a yardstick, Anton developed the idea of joining several yardsticks together to form a better measuring tool, later called the Ullrich Hinged Rule. It was so successful and demand was so high it went into factory production. Later the company obtained a patent for the hinge assembly. The design is still regarded as the worldwide standard.

In 1880's the company added wood and cast-iron spirit levels, hose spirit levels, and plumb lines to their product lines. In addition to red beech and oak, they used teak for their highest-quality levels. To achieve stability the teak had to be well-seasoned, so from time to time they purchased complete decks of sailing ships slated for scrapping as their source for aged teak.

At the end of the century the Maikammer site became too small for the production requirements of the growing company. The Ullrich family built new facilities in Annweiler, a small city in the southwestern region of Germany near the French border. STABILA's main production facilities and headquarters are still there today.

Even before the First World War the company was expanding into European export markets. A new plant was established in Châlons sur Marne, France. Before the war as many as 1,200 people were employed in the company's factories.

The production of measuring tapes began in the early 1900's. Just as Anton Ullrich, fifty years earlier, had watched the making of a measuring stick and thought there must be a better way, so it was with the measuring tape. In 1930 a patent was obtained for the precursor of the pocket tape measure still in use today.

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