Bringing engineering inside your home
116 years to this day, Frank Hornby obtained his patent for a paper titled “Improvements in Toy or Educational Devices For Children and Young People”. Little did he know that he was at the cusp of inventing one of the greatest toys of all time. A.S.Ganesh plays with this one....
If the Mystery of the monarchs appealed to those who spent their winter holidays by often taking a hike, this one connects with those who tend to take to some form of gaming, while remaining indoors. For this invention was the product of a father looking to amuse his kids. Only that, he not only touched upon their lives, but generations of children to come.
Born in 1863 in Liverpool, Frank Hornby left school while he was still in his teens in order to help out in his father’s business. He met Clara Walker Godefroy when they were both members of the Liverpool Philharmonic Society choir, and they married each other in 1887.
Hornby and Clara had two sons, Roland and Douglas, and a daughter, Patricia. Working in his spare time at the workshop in his home, Hornby used tin sheets and made oneoff toys for his sons. It was on one of these occasions that his breakthrough came to him, when he realised that making components that could then be used to make different things could be way more fun for children.
At the turn of the century, he applied for his first patents corresponding to these ideas and obtained them on January 9, 1901. He believed that for those youngsters who were curious to find out how gearing and levers worked, his strips of perforated metal and girders were ideal as a learning tool and toy.
Even though his search for a manufacturer proved futile, he found a backer in his own employer and he went to business. His “Mechanics Made Easy” sets not only included nuts and bolts, wheels and pulleys, but also had pieces with punched holes at regular intervals - allowing for greater flexibility while piecing together.
As a result, children could use these to make almost any complex mechanisms that they could imagine, bringing to life miniature versions of canals and bridges. A generation of children took to these sets to “make and know”, which is where Hornby is believed to have derived the name for his product - “Meccano”.
Meccanos went on sale in 1907 and they were a tremendous success. Even as his company struggled to cope with the demand, he kept working at newer ideas. His O-gauge clockwork train in 1920 brought clockwork mechanisms to the kit, for Hornby was no longer satisfied with providing only static parts.
The “Modelled Miniatures” - cottages, mills, churches, fields, roads and what not - that accompanied these train sets to make up the English countryside became so popular, that an entire new line of toys called Dinky Toys were born out of it in 1934.
Hornby’s greatest asset in each of these sets proved to be his attention to detail as the level of realism in his toys were incomparable with those that preceded it. His toys brought those playing with it a small-sized version of what they’ll be working with in reality in the future, inspiring many to take to technical careers.
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