By Suzanne McLeod
Special to Canadian Design and Construction Report
Fastening small metal pieces together into an original structure that reaches for the sky, a child dreams of being an engineer or an architect. In the early 1900s, kids opened an Erector™ set box filled with girders, sprockets, axels, and other parts. Through play and imagination, they learned the basic principles of design, construction and engineering. Inventor Alfred Carlton Gilbert was on to a winner.
It was a twist. The Erector set inventor had no childhood experience in construction toys. Gilbert (1884-1961) spent his energy in sports as a teenager, even building a gym and organizing events at his parents’ home. It was worthwhile. In 1908, the young man won an Olympic medal in pole vaulting.
Studying medicine, Gilbert completed his medical degree from Yale University in 1909, but he did not establish a practice. Leaving sports and medicine behind, Gilbert co-founded Mysto Manufacturing Company with John Petrie in 1908 to produce magical kits. (Gilbert was also an experienced performer, paying for his medical school tuition by working as a magician.)
Aboard a commuter train heading from his New Haven, Connecticut home in 1911 for a magic show performance in Manhattan, Gilbert was entranced, watching workers building towers with cranes, “twenty-foot-tall lattices of steel topped by triangular braces holding high-voltage lines,” wrote Bruce Watson in The Man Who Changed How Boys and Toys Were Made (Viking Penguin, New York 2002). Gilbert’s mind burst with ideas. “Wouldn’t boys like him just itch to get their hands on them and start building bridges, cranes, and derricks right in their own living rooms?” That evening at home, he asked his wife Mary for cardboard and scissors.
The couple cut cardboard templates of miniature girders, braces, and other parts—with accurate notches and perforations. Gilbert took the pieces to a machinist to transform the small components into steel. Taking his prototype toy set home, he launched into trial… and found an error. He realized that girders needed a thin lip to properly overlap. Redesigning the pieces, he ordered a corrected steel set. Fastening the adjusted girders together “with nuts and bolts, he made his first tower, just like the real ones on the railroad!” The inventor was ecstatic.
The year 1913 was busy for the Mysto Manufacturing Company. Gilbert was granted Patent US1066809A on July 8, 1913, under the classification of “Building blocks, strips, or similar building parts to be assembled by means of additional non-adhesive elements with grooves, e.g. dovetails.” Gilbert’s business partner Petrie left the operation; Petrie was only interested in magic business, not construction toys.
Ready to market his high-quality building set, Gilbert named it “The Mysto Erector: The Toy Whose Girders Resemble Structural Steel.” Enthusiastically displaying the wooden box of accurate miniature parts at New York Toy Fair, he also presented the set at Chicago’s Toy Fair. Retail buyers were captivated, and Gilbert was flooded with requests. Obtaining a loan, the inventor went into production, producing a range of sets numbered “0 to 8,”and priced from 50 cents to $5. He was just in time for Christmas.
Advertising widely, Gilbert’s plan was “to teach boys the principles of construction and engineering,” noted Norman Brosterman et al in “Toys Shape Minds, No. 6,” Canadian Centre for Architecture. Erector set was competing with Meccano™, a construction toy invented in England in 1898 by Frank Hornby (1863-1936) and marketed as Meccano in 1907. Gilbert’s design differed “by adding gears, pinions, and an electric motor.”
A brilliant marketer, Gilbert established an annual Erector design competition that was held for several years. Eager kids constructed a myriad of engineering designs, from bridges and cranes, to cars, buildings, and even a church. Over 60,000 entries poured into the New Haven factory mailbox, and for good reason. Prizes for the first two years were $15, then wildly increased as company profits grew. The company offered a two-seater Trumbull automobile for first prize in 1915. The following year, Gilbert’s offered a more-expensive car, Shetland pony, camping gear, camera, and many more prizes, according to Watson.
In 1915, Erector won a gold medal at the Panama Pacific Exposition at San Francisco, and the next year, Gilbert changed the firm name from Mysto Manufacturing Company to A.C. Gilbert Company. Three years into production of the construction toy, Erector sets reached $1 million in sales.
During WW1, Gilbert met with the Council of Defense and other authorities to persuade them that Erector toys were essential learning tools. Successful, sales continued, and in 1918 Gilbert was dubbed “The Man Who Saved Christmas,” mentioned Watson.
Through play, boys—and girls, too—learn facets of architecture and engineering with Erector sets. In 2000, Meccano merged with Erector, with Gilbert’s company becoming “Erector by Meccano.” Toronto’s Spin Master™ acquired Meccano in 2013. Erector sets continue to fuel young minds with passion for design and construction.
© Susanna McLeod. Living in Kingston, McLeod is writer specializing in Canadian History.
