Erector Set - History

History

Patented in 1913, The Erector Set was invented by AC Gilbert in 1911, and was manufactured by the A. C. Gilbert Company at the Erector Square factory in New Haven, Connecticut, from 1913 until its bankruptcy in 1967. The Gabriel company of Lancaster, Pennsylvania bought the Erector name, and continued to make identical sets into the 1970s and 1980s.

The Erector Set is believed by many to have been the subject of the first national advertising campaign in America for a toy. Its great success made it part of American folk culture, although its popularity has faded in recent decades in the face of competition from molded plastic construction toys, electronics, and other more "modern" toys.

The Erector Set was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame at The Strong in Rochester, New York, in 1998.

Scores, perhaps hundreds, of different Erector Set kits have been made over the decades, most famously the "No. 12½" deluxe kit that came with blueprints for the "Mysterious Walking Giant" robot.

Current "Erector" sets are actually Meccano sets manufactured by Meccano S.N. of France, part of the Nikko Group of Japan. They do not have the flanged beams of the original Gilbert Erector Sets. In the United States, since January 2008, these Erector sets have been distributed by Schylling Toys.

An extensive collection of Erector sets, model trains, chemistry sets, radioactivity experimentation kits, microscopes, and other AC Gilbert Company scientific and educational children's toys is housed in the Eli Whitney Museum, in Hamden, Connecticut.