Erector Set facts for kids
Erector Set (trademark styled as "ERECTOR") was a brand of metal toy construction sets which were originally patented by Alfred Carlton Gilbert and first sold by his company, the Mysto Manufacturing Company of New Haven, Connecticut in 1913.
In 1916, the company was reorganized as the A.C. Gilbert Company. The brand continued its independent existence under various corporate ownerships until 2000, when Meccano bought the Erector brand and consolidated its worldwide marketing with its own brand.
The coverage here focuses on the historical legacy of the classic Erector Set; for current developments under the "Erector by Meccano" brand name, see the Meccano article.
Basic Erector parts included various metal beams with regularly spaced holes for assembly using nuts and bolts. A frequently promoted patented feature was the ability to fabricate a strong but lightweight hollow structural girder from four long flat pieces of stamped sheet steel, held together by bolts and nuts (US Patent 1,066,809). Flat or curved pieces of sheet metal in various shapes and colors could be added to the structural skeleton. Hardened steel rods and screw clamps allowed the construction of hinges and the transmission of mechanical power via rotating parts such as pulleys, gears, wheels, and levers.
Unlike some earlier wooden construction sets, Erector could be used both for static structures and for dynamic structures incorporating mechanical linkages and other moving components. Modular, standardized construction sets like Erector provided the ability to build a model, then take it apart and build something else, over and over again.
Both AC-powered electric motors and battery-powered DC motors became available, usually equipped with gears to increase their torque and effective mechanical power. Later sets added miniature light bulbs and simple switches to control electrical power.
Erector remains a very versatile constructional medium. Almost any mechanical device can be built with this system, from structures, to complex working cranes, automatic gearboxes or clocks. It is frequently used to prototype new ideas and inventions. Model realization using Erector is limited only by the imagination and ingenuity of the builder.
Applications
Over the years, Erector Sets have been used to prototype a variety of devices, including:
- In 1949, an Erector set was used to build the precursor to the modern artificial heart by William Sewell and Dr. William Glenn of the Yale School of Medicine. The external pump successfully bypassed the heart of a dog for more than an hour.
- In the 1970s, information theory pioneer Claude Shannon constructed a bounce-juggling machine from an Erector set.
- In the late 1980s, with an Erector Set, various old toys, and bits of jewelry, Jack Kevorkian jury-rigged a machine he called the Thanatron (later renamed to the Mercitron). Three bottles were suspended from a rickety beam, one filled with a saline solution to open a patient’s veins, another with barbiturates for sedation, and a third with potassium chloride to stop the heart. After Kevorkian connected the patient to an IV, he or she would pull a chain on the device to start the lethal medications flowing.
- In the late 1990s, engineer Mark Sumner used Erector to create a working model for "Soarin’”, an attraction at Disney’s California Adventure in Anaheim, California and Walt Disney World's Epcot near Orlando, Florida.
In 1990 Meccano S.A. built a giant Ferris wheel in France. It was modelled after the original 1893 Ferris Wheel built by George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. at the World's Columbian Exposition at Chicago and was shipped to the United States to promote "Erector by Meccano" after Meccano S.A. had bought out the Erector brand name and began selling Erector by Meccano sets in the U.S. It went on display in New York City after which it was purchased by Ripley's Believe It or Not! and put on display in their St. Augustine, Florida museum. The model, the largest in size at the time, is 6.5 metres (21 ft) high, weighs 544 kilograms (1,199 lb), was made from 19,507 pieces, 50,560 nuts and bolts, and took 1,239 hours to construct. At this mass and size, some deviation from Erector by Meccano-only parts was a necessity, to prevent it collapsing (mainly in the structural spokes). The largest model by mass would certainly be in contention but some models have topped 600 kilograms (1,300 lb).[citation needed]
Images for kids
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Exhibit in the Museum of the City of New York
