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Alfred Carlton Gilbert created the first Erector sets in 1913. Gilbert, an amateur magician from New Haven, Connecticut, and his partners first entered the toy business with magic sets. Soon, the mechanical construction toy would eclipse the magic business and the A. C. Gilbert Company (he bought out his partners in the predecessor Mysto Manufacturing Company) would achieve world wide fame with the talented and outgoing Gilbert at the helm for nearly 50 years. |  |
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A. C. Gilbert was the son of fairly well-to-do parents. He attended Yale and finally was graduated with a medical degree-- although he never practiced. Instead he was keenly interested in amateur athletics, having won an Olympic medal for pole vaulting in 1908. His interests expanded to include big game hunting, of which he was a crack shot, world traveling and making wildlife motion pictures.
The Gilbert company produced not only Erector sets, but a complete line of chemistry and scientific sets as well as his American Flyer line of model trains. Manufactured at the company's plant at Erector Square in New Haven, tens of thousands of Erector sets wound up under Christmas trees each year. Marketed chiefly toward boys, Gilbert was a master salesman and knew his market extremely well. A gifted industrialist who understood both engineering and employee relations, he also held an extremely valuable patent for his process for making enameled wire. This patent made Gilbert one of the largest producers of small electric motors in the world. His son, A. C. Gilbert, Jr. succeeded him at the firm. After the elder Gilbert's death in 1956, the company tried to keep pace with changing times but even with space age additions to the product line, could not compete with television, the Beatles and the transistor. The last Erector sets produced by the original company came off the line in 1962. The trademark is now owned by a South American firm who continues to market a line of mechanical construction sets. Much more information about Gilbert and his company can be found in several books which are detailed later in these pages. Suffice it to say that an Erector set was something every boy wanted... especially those of us who could not resist taking things apart and (hopefully) putting them back together again! |
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| This is the famous Erector #8 1/2 Hudson locomotive of 1931. It was in the window of my grandfather's automotive shop in Clovis, New Mexico for many years. This particular model was private-labeled "Little Jim" and sold by J.C. Penney. |
