Spent most of yesterday messing with cardboard and paper mache. Made a little awning for the playhouse that's so cute it almost made me cry. Seriously, where does this stuff come from? I can't be thinking it up, so someone or something must send ideas on a cosmic string that vibrates inside my head.
I love it when I haven't yet even consciously recognized a problem with a design, but an answer arrives as simply as a paper airplane sailed in through my ear.
(Yes, it does get crowded in there. Thank you for not making fun.)
Anyway, when I got home last night, the tv in the sunroom was on, tuned in to a movie about A.C. Gilbert, the guy who invented the Erector Set. What are the odds that I'd spend the day designing toys and walk into the house to find a movie about a toy designer playing on a tv that's rarely even turned on?
Twang. The cosmic string suggested research. Google revealed a fascinating man. Gilbert won Olympic gold in the pole vault, completed medical school, and paid his college tuition doing magic. He founded his toy company to produce magic kits.
Gilbert developed the Erector Set after watching a work crew put up a power line tower. Soon after the first set was sold in 1913, the nation went crazy for them. Erector Sets became one of the most popular toys of all time.
Generations of boys (and the toys were marketed to and considered nearly exclusive property of boys—we can talk about that later) learned to put things together and take them apart from playing with Erector Sets. New sets and models were events in a boy's life.
Gilbert's motto was, Playing leads to learning. I reckon. Did you know that William Sewell put together the prototype for the first artificial heart pump from his childhood Erector Set?
(Googling around, I also discovered that John Lloyd Wright, son of Frank Lloyd Wright, invented Lincoln Logs and that some MIT students built a computer from Tinker Toys that actually played tic tac toe.)
So...I'm playing. I'm learning. And I'm wondering what history will reveal about the impact of today's popular toys (can you say Grand Theft Auto?).
4 comments:
"What are the odds that I'd spend the day designing toys and walk into the house to find a movie about a toy designer playing on a tv that's rarely even turned on?"
100%. There are no accidents.
The Erector Set was also first manufacutured in New Haven by AC Gilbert.It is on State Street in New Haven. It was and still is called Erector Square. It is a brick industrial building that is basically an artist's loft and craftman's center.
Love,
Suzy
I loved my erector set when I was a kid. Hands down, my favorite toy.
But, still, I couldn't help but have to drag my mind from the gutter when I first saw the photo on the top of your post. Something about the word "erector..."
This reminds me of the Sudbury schools. Learning completely based on a child's passions, and playing.
Glad you had fun.
Post a Comment