Erector Set

I hope everyone had a nice Valentine’s Day, and got to indulge in some chocolate, or are planning to.  I am not a big chocolate or dessert person, but those dark chocolates from the shop in Sayville are just really good.  I snuck one today while making dinner.

Had Paella for dinner and then took Kyle to soccer practice in Deer Park.  I decided to go for a jog at the field and hope that my knee doesn’t bother me tomorrow.  A nice cool night, and 3 easy miles completed, and then it was back to the car to wait for Kyle’s practice to end. 

Come home to write the blog and find that Survivor was not recorded on the DVR.  Luke filled me in, and since it is the first week, really nothing too important missed.  American Idol is on the DVR, so I can catch up on that tomorrow.

This day in history “Albert Carlton Gilbert was an American inventor who patented the Erector set after he founded the A.C. Gilbert Co. New Haven, Connecticut (1908) to manufacture boxed magic sets. In 1913, he introduced Erector Sets. Similar construction toys then existed, such as Hornby's Meccano set made in England. Meccano sets included pulleys, gears, and several 1/2" wide strips of varying length with holes evenly spaced on them. Gilbert needed something unique for his Erector sets, so he created the square girder, made using several 1" wide strips with triangles cut in them. These had their edges bent over so 4 strips could be screwed together to form a very sturdy square girder. Over the next 40 years, some 30 million Erector Sets were sold”

What a cool invention.  I recall putting together projects with it, and when they came out with pulleys and motors, the projects really got to be fun to build.  Modern almost equivalent was a toy made out of plastic that my kids used to put together and take apart to make things.  I can’t recall the name of them, but they did not inspire me, and instead of connecting steel pieces with nuts and bolts as with the erector set, everything snapped together.

Photo of the day “Erector Set”