Alfred Carlton Gilbert was a Yale medical degree holder, Olympic gold medalist and successful industrialist, and he accomplished at least two of the three by magic.
Mr. Gilbert, you see, was an illusionist. Income from his act helped him pay tuition at Yale, and the world-famous toy manufacturing outfit he would subsequently build in New Haven, the A. C. Gilbert Company, was first known as the Mysto Manufacturing Company, formed in 1909 to produce and sell magicianโs kits.
To most people at that time, engineering and the sciences might as well have been magic given the special knowledge they required and the astonishing ways they were changing humanityโs experience of the world. In 1911, Mr. Gilbert was so awed by ambitious construction projects in New Haven and elsewhere that he resolved to harness that makerโs spirit with a toy, for the masses. Two years later, in 1913, the first iterations of his companyโs signature Erector product line, known by the umbrella term โErector Sets,โ went on sale.
sponsored by
Toymakers can be expected to tinker, and the toymakers at Gilbert encouraged kids to tinker, too: there wasnโt just one Erector Set, and there wasnโt just one thing that any Erector Set could do. Over the next 54 years, until the companyโs demise in 1967, the sets evolved greatly, containing new and varied combinations of nuts, bolts, fasteners, steel girders and plates, pulleys, motors, magnets and light bulbsโโhundreds of parts to build thousands of models,โ as advertised on one particular Erector Set that, among other things, promised the ability to build a โmysterious walking robotโ with โelectric eyesโโalong with tools and instructions for putting the pieces together.
A kid could build miniature working tractors, derricks and magnetized cranes to make a not-so-make-believe construction site. Model twin-engine airplanes and motorized tanks could lead a battalion into bloodless battle. Erector girders combined with A. C. Gilbertโs American Flyer mix-and-matchable train cars, electrified to run on tracks and built to the scale of real trains, could explore an imaginary frontier. And then thereโs that robot, which could take any of those scenarios to new creative heights.
No wonder, then, that last Saturday, at a crowded reception for the Eli Whitney Museum and Workshopโs ongoing special exhibit, The Erector Set at 100, young children weaned on iPads and Xboxes oohโed and ahhโed at toys older than their parents. The kidsโactually, the adults, too, as you can see in one of the images aboveโcrowded around a long, thin table holding Erector knicks and knacks, free to play and build with, which many did. They could hardly keep their hands away from a button causing an Erector Ferris wheel to turn, or from switches powering American Flyer trains around an elaborate model village and countryside, with a town green that looks suspiciously like New Havenโs. (This latter installation is in fact part of an annual exhibit, Mr. Gilbertโs Railroad, thatโs riding shotgun this year next to the one-time-only The Erector Set at 100.)
sponsored by
The very best qualities of the Whitney Museumโs Erector exhibition, among many good ones, are its honesty and droll humor. One of the exhibitโs several bright red placards, titled โFaults and all?,โ says of Erector Sets, โThere were flaws in usability, which mattered to young hands. And there were safety flaws that those young hands rarely pointed out to their parents.โ
Contrasted with todayโs cultural and legal emphases on child safety, some of A. C. Gilbertโs toys seem shockingly dangerous. Erector Sets contained sharp parts and easily exposed electrical components, but they donโt seem half as perilous as the companyโs home chemistry sets, which contained numerous chemical agents and detailed instructions for combining and testing them. The set on display at the Whitney Museum, kept behind glass, holds 19 screw-cap jars marked with chemical names like sulphur, potassium nitrate, ammonium chloride and sodium bisulphate. The first two can be used to make sulphuric acid. The next two? Hydrochloric acid.
An instruction booklet accompanying at least one version of the chemistry set, published in 1936, advised kids on how to make both of those highly corrosive compounds, alongside scores of other experiment suggestions. The manual even called for young chemists to use their thumbsโas opposed to, say, rubber or glass capsโto cover the tops of their test tubes as they shook the contents into sulphuric acid.
sponsored by
Risky? Oh yes. But it was a less risk-averse time, and these were toys that treated kids like adults, which in some ways seems a pretty noble and attractive approach. When a company talks up, not down, to kidsโYale academics wrote that chemistry manual in consultation with Mr. Gilbert himself, and they didnโt pull many intellectual punchesโit challenges them to rise to the occasion, and maybe even to become genuinely knowledgeable on a subject. Marketers at the A. C. Gilbert Company used this as a key selling point, probably aimed at parents, leading off a catalog sent out in 1958 with the phrase, โCareer-Building Science Toysโฆโ (That catalog is notable for another reason: after decades of marketing explicitly to boys, the mailer contained a โLab Technician Set for Girls.โ The productโs progressivism extended to the inclusion of a technical manual that read just like the boysโ version, though it ended at the heavy use of the color pink on the girlsโ versionโs packaging and, more fundamentally, at the use of any separating qualifier at all.)
It puts into starker relief the insights of the Whitney exhibitionโs aforementioned placard, which also observes, โScars that are worn now with pride โฆ harken to an age of trust and independence,โ when kids went largely unsupervised. โThe scars are small lessons that wisened hands for bigger risks,โ it goes onโperhaps the kind of lessons that todayโs kids are too shielded from?
The Erector Set at 100 offers many other big and small ideas to ponder, but it would be criminal to reveal any more than we already have. After all, the joy of discovery is what A. C. Gilbert and his remarkable toysโlike the Eli Whitney Museum, which sees so much in themโwere all about.
The Erector Set at 100 and Mr. Gilbertโs Railroad
Eli Whitney Museum and Workshop โ 915 Whitney Ave, Hamden (map)
Sat 10am-3pm & Sun 12-5pm through Jan. 26. Special hours Dec. 23, 26, 27, 30, 31 (12-5pm) and Dec. 24 (12-3pm).
(203) 777-1833 | www.eliwhitney.org/museum/exhibitions/erector-set-100
Written and photographed by Dan Mims.