The Iron Man Hand Grippers – Iron Game History – April 1990

It was small enough to be carried “in the coat pocket”, but effective enough to strengthen your “…hand, wrist, forearm, biceps, latissimus, etc.” — or so the 1904 advertisement in Health & Strength magazine claimed for the “Nutcracker Gripper.” The gripper was described as extra strong, was shaped in a “V” with a coiled spring-steel at the vertex. Perhaps buried inside that vertex was the secret of how a hand gripper could aid in developing the lats, much less the “etc.”