After some renewed research today, I read that it’s an age old argument but, from what I can gather, Black and Decker were approached by NASA, to come up with some portable tools for astronauts.
Bearing in mind no gravity etc. There was a drill submitted that was “portable” very big and heavy, and ran off a large power supply. Apparently the supply didn’t last long in power, and took a very long time to charge.
So it was a commissioned item, no use whatsoever to a builder or anybody in construction or DIY. In fact no use to anybody apart from astronauts. It was still technology though.
A few year later, Makita brought to the industry, a lightweight completely cordless drill, that had a removable rechargeable battery. This had never been done before in this set up, size and design. So it was the first truly cordless drill/driver offered to the masses.
They did have the patent, and cornered the market for a few years.
So it depends on what we term as a cordless drill? The astronaut drill wasn’t marketed, as it had not much, if any use outside of the space program.