Paul Flack believes that most professional engineers were influenced by the toys they played with as kids. Budding engineers, he says, typically had technical toy sets -- Legos, Lincoln Logs, Erector Sets, Hot Wheels, or some other product that ultimately played a role in their choice of a profession.
For Flack, the toy was a Kenner Girder & Panel Building Set. That building set -- which enabled kids to create realistic structures for scale-model office buildings and bridges -- actually did more for Flack then just steer him toward an engineering career, however. It made him into a toy manufacturer. Today, Flack's family business, Bridge Street Toys, has resurrected the Girder & Panel, Bridge & Turnpike, and Hydrodynamics building sets from the 1960s that Flack played with as a child.
"I've had people tell me they became architects or engineers because of these building sets," Flack told Design News recently.
The Clarksville Elementary School Building Set is one of the engineering-inspired offerings from Paul Flack’s Bridge Street Toys.
Flack set out to resurrect the building sets in 2003, almost a half-century after Kenner Products had originally introduced them. His odyssey started shortly before then, when he tried to find one of the sets for his son.
"I wanted a set for my son because I had had one as a kid," he recalled.
The problem was that the Kenner sets had long since been discontinued. But he and his wife, Carol, both of whom had chemical engineering degrees from the University of Maryland and MBAs from Carnegie Mellon's Tepper School of Business, decided that their inability to find the product indicated a void in the toy market. Soon afterwards, they launched Bridge Street Toys out of their Massachusetts home.
To this day, Bridge Street Toys still operates in the classic style of countless American startups. Raw materials are stored in two small yard structures; final assembly and shipping is done in the garage. The home's basement is for finished goods, and the dining room is the display area.
Manufacturing the tiny HO-scale (1:87.1) parts, however, proved to be no small task. Shortly after launching the company, the Flacks learned that toys from the 1960s don't necessarily pass today's safety regulations. Aided by their manufacturing backgrounds, the two engineers decided to change the parts from stamped polystyrene to injection-molded polyethylene. They quickly found, however, that manufacturing of molded three-inch beams and columns was costly, largely because they needed 40 different molds to build all the products they envisioned. They considered buying an injection molding machine and putting it in the barn in their backyard, but eventually concluded that they'd be better off doing the manufacturing outside their home.
I probably had a version of every common "build it" toy that there was and then some (remember "Mr. Machine?"). Legos are like programming in assembly language and Capsela is like Visual Basic. Either way, it takes some thought to create something unique.
Toothpicks: I had a 7th grade assignment to build a toothpick structure. The rules were very strict to prevent gluing together solid masses of toothpicks. It had to be 12" tall. They were to be tested with bricks. I confidently predicted that mine would hold five bricks. Did they ever laugh at me! Well, the big day came. There were only four bricks and it held them all - plus four volumes of the "World Book". My closest competitor collapsed on the second brick.
We moved that year. My best friend took it home and reported that his two year old cousin used it as a stool.
Did I become an engineer because of the toys? I don't think so. The interest was already there. The toys just made it fun.
I with you on the importance of a library card, bellhop. I still remember going to the town library at about 8 and getting my first library card. It was a whole new world opening. My first stop was the dinosaur books. I remember checking out every single one over a period of a few weeks. Then it was every book on volcanoes, then every book on tornados.
I generally prefer the freeform building tool toys, like the freeform Legos, and even Tinker Toys and toothpicks, because you get to exercise more of your creativity and ingenuity. I agree, Rob, that the packaged toys aren't nearly as much fun. I think the reason the building sets in this story are appealing is their beauty. I guess they remind me of a kind of hardware version of dollhouses, that whole fascination with miniatures, which I also liked.
Agreed! I got a library card when I moved to Tampa at age 6. I used to walk the half mile there and back to trade in my book for another. I hit the science books pretty hard, but I liked fiction too. The libray card actually pre-dated the Hydrodynamics set.
You're not alone, bellhop. Paul Flack liked the Hydrodynamics set best, and that is said to have had a profound effect on his decision to become a chemical engineer.
Amid this interesting discussion of construction today, one forgets the importance of books in whetting future professional interest. I remember getting out of the library at a very young age a basic guide to electricity. It was either a trade school or military manual, copiously illustrated. I spend weeks with those tomes.
I loved my Hydrodynamics set! It was a surprise gift one Christmas. Did my parents ever know me?! I went on to build other things with it such as submarines powered by an aquarium pump.
Capsela is another great toy. Among other things, it can difinitively demonstrate the improved efficiency of "screw drive" over "paddle wheels" on a boat. The track drives are fun too!
You're right, Ann. Legos came much later. My experience with Legos came with my kids. I liked the freeform Legos. I wasn't as crazy about the packaged Lego toys where the box came with just the Legos you needed to make a specific robot or car. I changed my mind when I realized these packages had replaced my childhood model planes and boats. They are kind of like paint by the numbers -- not very creative, but good training in learning how to manipulate parts to achieve a whole.
Actually, I enjoyed the Tinker Toys and even the toothpick palaces. It was more of a challenge to figure out how to build things so they wouldn't fall down. What I really wanted was an Erector set, but in the 50s they were very pricey and not something parents usually gave to girls. Like Rob, I don't remember Legos. I think they came later.
With LEDs dropping in price virtually every year, automakers have begun employing them, not only on luxury vehicles, but on entry-level models, as well.
Using almost 200 light-emitting diodes in the front and back of the new 2014 CTS, Cadillac designers are showing how LEDs can change the character of a vehicle.
We recently posted an online slideshow called, “18 People You Didn’t Know Were Engineers.” Within hours of its publication, readers began to suggest names of other luminaries -- astronauts, politicians, athletes and actors -- who were educated or had worked as engineers.
In yet another sign that hydrogen is creeping into the consciousness of global automotive designers, sports car maker Aston Martin plans to run a hydrogen-fueled vehicle in a 24-hour Grand Touring race later this month.
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