Tinkertoy to Dexion: A Technical Appendix to Postblogging Technology, April 1956

By susiq5555 - ebay #120137669430,

permission granted [1], CC BY-SA 3.0,

 

"Tinkertoy" is the title because it is what comes to mind when I think about the building sets of my earliest childhood. (Next up are my rich cousins' Lego sets, please don't tell them I called them "rich.") I do not, however, have much of a sense of a Tinkertoy set, as opposed to oddments at the bottom of a toy chest. Tinkertoy Construction Sets are an American product dating to 1914. Their signature feature is the use of wood, which makes it easy to implement wheels and pulleys with child friendly components, but there were lots of wood construction sets. The issue here, it tuns out, is the non-wood one.

The departure point for today's appendix is  the use of Dexion components for field repairs of DC3s. 

 Dexion turns out still be a thing, although such is the state of Google Search today that you won't find them on the main page. essentially A "slotted angle steel strip construciton system," it rather reminds me of the various aircraft-building systems of the Twenties and Thirties that often had their origins in prefabricated steel building sets. But we did Nissen huts around here a long time ago. Dexion seems like an everyday product with a primordial use case and a secure  business plan, so I was a bit surprised to learn that  "it ran into difficulties" and "eventually ceased trading" story, in 2003. The Dexion trademark was bought out, by Swedes, perhaps, and the product is now made in factories in Germany  and Romania. 

The other inciting even this week is that quaint Danish general strike over the forty hour week. Not only is this sure to lead to a wage-price spiral and inflation, but now Britain's supply of butter and bacon is in trouble! And since there isn't much going on in Denmark to my knowledge except bicycling, which they have to share with the Netherlands, and Lego, we might as well go there. And the ever worthy Meccano, of course.

Lego, I report to surely no-one's surprise, since it is right there in Wikipedia, dates the trademark bck to 1932, at which time it was another wood product. I'm slightly surprised to learn that they got into the interlocking bricks via Hilary Page's Kiddicraft line, patented in 1939, descended from matryoshka dolls, and now buried in the Fisher Price catalogue, so that this story has the classic "invented in Russia" "neglected in Britain," and "American as far as we know" angles.. All we need now is Needham claiming a Song Dynasty original, and a neglected Rumanian. You might think that I would have to add an American "inventor" to make the trifecta, but in fact Fisher Price got involved in 1979, after Lego paid Page's heirs a princely £45,000 to make them go away.

Lego says that it was its uncompromising Scandinavian commitment to quality that overcame traditional distaste for plastic toys, but acrylonite butadiene styrene, which was patented by Borg Warner in 1948 and became available on the market in 1954, might be more important. Kiddicraft was  made with cellulose acetate, which, although popular in various entertainment-adjacent manufacturing fields (famously, movie film and billiard balls) is still guncotton, just like the film stock and billiard balls of traditional. Which is, after all, an entertaining thought. (In the abstract: No-one likes being in an actual fire. and that presumably goes twice for children's toys.)

Meccano is the original non-wood erector set toy. When I started writing this post, I vaguely associated it with British engineering culture. After a few minutes of reading, it was more than vague association! Frank Hornby, the inventor, worked in a meat importing business (so the disassembly line, kind of like most of what kids do with these sets) when he went to market in 1901 with the endorsement of no less than H. S. Hele-Shaw. He was not, unfortunately, related to Richard Hornsby, and so to diesels, caterpillars tracks, tanks and so on; but he is behind Dinky Toys and a model railway system. (Model railway sets are clearly part of this story, but that's taking things a bit far afield.) Somewhat incredibly, Meccano was in financial difficulties in 1964 and had to sell out to Lines Brothers, 1947's "largest toymaker in the world," which "collapsed" in 1971.

So, in other words, not a Hornsby tactor. By © Jorge Royan / http://www.royan.com.ar, CC BY-SA 3.0,
 https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18783716

Apparently the mid-Sixties were "a bad time for model builders." In Britain, anyway. Meccano migrated to France, and lasted many more years there, although Wikipedia does not know where Meccano set manufacture moved after the 2023 closure of the Calais factory. Perhaps they are still working through back inventory? It sure seems as though the modern times would be bad for toymakers what with the screentime and the baby dearth. $800 Lego Minas Tirith sets seem like they are aimed at post-childhood markets, although a political blogger I read for his blazingly wrong takes on airmindedness claims that his purchase makes for good family time. 

 

What I am more at a loss to explain how toymakers could get into so much trouble in the Sixties and early Seventies.

Loss of the Sea Gem, 27 December 1965

(It's all natural gas in the Sixties, so I guess we have to blame Tory tax cuts instead.)