Human beings have been attaching stuff to other stuff for millennia. For thousands of years we favored the brutal efficiency of nails, but eventually someone came along and invented the nail's more sophisticated cousin, the screw. The first screws were turned with a wrench, but modern screws with a slot in the top were created around the 1500s. Slotted screws are, of course, turned by screwdrivers, which were invented in ... uh, the 1800s.
Practical Machinist
"We were inspired to screw things with a long hard tool after observing your mom."
Of course, people were using them somehow -- it's just that for three centuries, people had to MacGyver ways to turn their screws. That's a ridiculous length of time to go before someone decided that maybe there should be an official way to do this. According to a guy who wrote an entire book on the history of the screw (because, look, somebody had to), the first time that screwdrivers appeared on the scene was around 1812. For about a century before that, carpenters used a flat bit on their carpenters' brace. Before that? Uh ... witchcraft? Who knows?