A little more on Hugh Boutell

Image sourced Narrow Gauge and Short Line Gazette, Nov / Dec '92

At the OVAR swap meet a couple of Sundays ago I bought a small collection of back issues of the Narrow Gauge and Short Line Gazette - 50 more-or-less random issues from the mid-1980s to the mid-2010s for $3. I've been spending some pleasant evenings leafing through their pages, seeing the sights. I was quite happy to find an article in the Nov / Dec '92 issue called The Influence of Hugh Boutell by Bob Brown, the magazine's longtime editor and publisher. You may recall I wrote a little about Boutell awhile back on his use of Pretty Village cardboard cutout buildings on his layout. Although the NGSLG didn't answer all my questions about Boutell's use of structures, it did answer a few other ones.

The NGSLG article showed a high resolution version of the photo that appeared in the August '34 issue of Popular Science - that's the one I've shown above. It allowed me to get a better view of the buildings, and the image strengthens my opinion that they are Pretty Village items, which I've noted in the image with red boxes

Second, it's mentioned that the layout in the photo is 1-1/4 inch gauge. His pioneering OO layout (which I erroneously thought was HO), was built much earlier between 1925 and 1929.

Mr. Brown ends the article by noting he acquired Boutell's structures along with his other models in 1979. That's a long time ago now, but I wonder if he still has them?

Problem model?

Meccano Magazine, pg 594, July 1928

I've been re-reading a few of my books on Buckminster Fuller and geodesic domes. In Buckminster Fuller: Anthology for a  New Millennium from 2001 I came across this footnote by Sir Harold W. Kroto, co-winner of the 1996 Noble Prize in Chemistry for the co-discovery of buckminsterfullerene:

Incidentally, I lay the blame for the dearth of engineers and scientists in the West fairly squarely on the fact that Lego has replaced Meccano as a "toy" of choice in many homes in the developed world. I use the word "toy" advisedly, because Lego is a toy, whereas Meccano is not only a toy but also an amazing introduction to the world of real engineering. It gives the child a real understanding of how nuts and bolts should be put together. They learn to tighten a nut and bolt sufficiently tightly to not misthread it, and they get a feel for materials and learn how metal structures actually work. (An anecdote: A retired gentleman, who kindly came to display his amazing pantographs to young children at the 1999 BA festival in Sheffield, told me that he made a four-speed gearbox when he was eleven, and when he got his first job, at twelve, he was essentially already trained for it).

This footnote is part of Sir Kroto's essay on some of the history of geodesic spheres. In the essay he makes note of a photo in a 1928 issue of Meccano Magazine of a geodesic sphere made from Meccano that was built by one of the magazine's readers. The essay includes a grainy reproduction of the photo, so I thought I'd hunt down the original. As well as being a much clearer picture of the structure, it has an editorial comment not included in Sir Kroto's essay. The editors aren't sure what this structure could be used for, but "it might be used as a "problem model," for a great deal of concentration is necessary to discover exactly how many pentagons and hexagons are included in its design."

Problem model? An interesting idea.

Another Peter-Austin Mystery: Etch A Sketch

Back in November when I was investigating the Peter-Austin / Kenner Girder & Panel Set mystery I came across a Peter-Austin manufactured Etch A Sketch on eBay. My sister and I had one of these when we were kids. I clearly remember that distinctive box. This particular one is in excellent condition: still works, no damage, and the box is in good shape. I plopped down $40 and bought it. No shipping on this one as luckily enough it was being sold by Toy Heaven in nearby Smiths Falls - ok, to be picky, there was gasoline consumption involved :-)

What's the mystery? First, the Etch A Sketch Wikipedia entry makes no mention of Peter-Austin manufacturing this toy, only Ohio Art. The Wikipedia Talk section for the Etch A Sketch entry notes that this statement was removed:

Though, Austin R. Kelk - fmr. Chairman of the Kelton Corporation - also claims to be the creater of the Etch-a-Sketch.

because:

Google shows no non-Wikipedia-derived hits for "Austin R. Kelk"; Kelk etch-a sketch; Kelk Kelton corporation. There's also no mention of any claim from Kelk on any of the linked resources. Kelton Corporation appear to have marketed etch-a-sketch in Canada, but that's all.

Here's where things get a bit mysterious. On the back of my box it says,

ETCH-A-SKETCH
Patented Canada 1960
Great Britain
Patent No. 915,371
Trade Mark Canada
and Great Britain

There's no mention of a US patent, and all it says about licensing is this:

Mfd. in Canada under License by Kelton Corporation
For Peter Austin Mfg. Co. Toronto 

On the back of the Etch A Sketch though the story gets a little more complicated, and has this to add:

No. 505 "Etch-A-Sketch" R Magic Screen

Made under license French Patent

U.S. Patent Pending

Canadian Patent Pending

Trademark Reg. Canada and U.S.A.

That Wikipedia article says that Etch A Sketch was invented in France by André Cassagnes in the 1950s, and was first publicly shown at the Nuremberg Toy Fair in 1959. Ohio Arts was said to have taken a pass on the toy at that show, but when they "saw it a second time", they went for it. I don't know what happened between 1959 and 1960, but from what's printed on the box it makes it seem like this is a purely Canadian product, but looking at the back of the toy, one can see that there's probably more to the story. 

Hieroglyphics adorn the box

I looked up Canadian patent 915,371, and apparently it's for a Feather Plucking Device ! A search of UK patents yields nothing for that number. I tried doing various general searches for Canadian, UK, and French patents, but couldn't find one. Maybe it has been bought and sold over the years? No doubt, answering these questions are what keeps patent lawyers employed, and I don't plan on trying to find the patents :-)

To finish, according to our friends at Wikipedia, these days Etch A Sketch is owned by another Canadian company, Spin Master, who's also headquartered in Toronto. I suspect there's an interesting story of Etch A Sketch's journey from France in 1959, to Peter-Austin in 1960, through Ohio Art, to Spin Master in 2021. The question is: Is there anybody still around who knows what it is?

[28 December 2021 afternoon update: Vince did what I should have done and found this post that lists the various Etch A Sketch patents. Much thanks Vince !]

Of Christmas shopping and time travel

The Peter-Austin Trans Canada Highway Bridge Set I bought doesn't include instructions or a planning guide, so I have no idea how complete it is, or what the manufacturer suggested one could build. However, I figure they must have included enough parts to build the bridge on the box top, so I decided to see if I had enough components for that project. 

I sort of did. There are enough girders, beams, and stubs to build the bridge, but not enough unbroken ones for the approach structures. Also, there're enough road insert panels for the bridge's elevated roadway, but, once that's in place, there aren't near enough for the approaches.

As well, even though I have plenty of diagonal members, they are quite brittle, and it turns out most of their holes are just a little bit too small to connect to the girders. If I radius the holes just a little with an X-Acto knife, they fit quite well. I didn't want to go and fix them all, so I just installed a handful and left it at that. I should note though that as you install the diagonals you can feel the entire structure stiffen up. Without them the bridge isn't bad rigidity-wise, but some flex and sag are noticeable.

Although the box top says it's a set for building highway bridges, it appears to be able to support HO scale trains. The Kenner planning books noted their's could, so I thought the Peter-Austin sets probably could too. For this application I'd say all of the diagonals need to be installed if the box top bridge is going to support HO trains. Also, I think the set's approaches are likely too steep for trains, so the owner would have to take care to provide their own.

As for O scale trains, I don't think this particular bridge is big enough. It would probably need to be double the size, and I suspect you'd need at least two sets for such a project.

I should have done this first, but after I built the bridge I had a look in the Kenner planning guide to see if they had the same bridge. They did. They called it the Double Diamond Cantilever. Mine doesn't look like a diamond because I left off all the diagonals. The planning book's photo gives a good idea of what the approaches should look like.

Obviously, I then went and built one from the Kenner parts I had bought. I found the Kenner diagonals had the same problem as the Peter-Austins: brittle, and the holes were a bit undersize. Again, I left off the diagonals as I didn't want to damage them. One difference though is the Kenner horizontal and vertical girders seem to have lost a lot of their elasticity over the last 60 or so years. The Peter-Austins still seem quite spry. When I was building the Kenner bridge it seemed the components kept falling part when the bridge was in various partially completed states, and didn't hold together until near the very end when everything was locked in place. No doubt if I had added diagonals along the way this wouldn't have happened. It seemed the Peter-Austin parts were still pliant enough for the joints to hold together regardless of how complete the structure was.

I don't have any Kenner road panels, so I just laid a piece of track over the horizontals to see how the bridge held up with an old HO train. It was fine, but it would have been much better with diagonals. 

A couple things my Kenner parts included that the Peter-Austin set didn't were flag poles and signs. The Kenner signs included one that announced: Kenner Bridge MCMLVIII. Or, 1958 for us. So, I'm assuming the parts date from 1958.

Well, if you're planning on cranking up your time machine today for a little late '50s or early '60s Christmas shopping, that's my review of these two fine building sets :-)

Interconnectable

P-A | K | P-A | K

I was curious to see if the parts from the Peter-Austin set were in any way connectable with those from Kenner. The answer: to a certain extent, yes.

In the photo the base frame is made from Peter-Austin (P-A) parts, the second floor is Kenner (K), then P-A, then topped off with K. It looks like you can stack layers made from one manufacturer on layers made from the other, but you can't mix manufacturers on a layer, because the horizontal girders use different connection technologies. 

I tried snapping a K panel onto a P-A frame and it fit just fine. I need to try mixing and matching the diagonal braces. 

So, P-A  was smart in that if you bought their product you weren't completely locked into the vendor motel, and could do some interconnection with K's parts.

Here's the problem. Those pins on the P-A horizontal girders are weak. I found that if I wasn't careful disassembling a structure it wouldn't take much twisting to snap the pins off the horizontals. You've got to make sure you push the pin parallel to the vertical girder to prevent the piece of molded plastic that connects the pin to the horizontal girder from bending and snapping. The set has 7 broken horizontals and 1 broken vertical. The bag of K parts I bought had no broken girders. Ok, I admit this isn't a statistical sampling, and the parts are 60 years old, but it appears the P-A lug-and-pin connection method isn't as durable as K's. For a child's toy, I can imagine some disappointing breakage while attempting to take apart a structure. 

Maybe the Peter-Austin case file is almost closed?

Peter-Austin Mfg Co,'s Trans Canada Highway Bridge Set

The story so far: In the book, Architecture on the Carpet, the authors Brenda and Robert Vale put forward the idea that Kenner's Girder & Panel toy was invented and first sold by a Toronto firm called Peter-Austin Manufacturing Company in 1956, and the version that Kenner first released in 1957 was more-or-less an exact copy. The Vales speculate the Kenner product was “what appears to be a commercial rip-off”, not something sold under license. Being Toronto born and raised, and the proud owner of a Kenner Girder and Panel set as a child, I was intrigued and have spent some time over the last few weeks investigating whether or not the Vale's assertion was true. I won't keep you in suspense: I don't think it is.

I was quite lucky to find a Peter-Austin Trans Canada Highway Bridge Set on eBay. It's roughly the equivalent  of a Kenner Turnpike girder and panel set. It looks fairly complete, but there're no instructions or planning book, so I'm not quite sure how complete it actually is. And, there're no dates anywhere on either the box or parts to suggest when this toy was released. 

Diagram from the U.S. patent

However, while searching the internet I came across U.S. patent # 3,168,793, Construction Toy Means For Locking A Horizontal I-Beam Between Two Detachably Joined Vertical Column Members. It was filed on 20 Nov 1961, and issued on 9 Feb 1965. The inventor was Henry Gibson, and it was assigned to the Kelton Corporation, the parent company of Peter-Austin Manufacturing. 

There was also a Canadian patent, #693194, Constructional Toys, that was filed on 18 Nov 1961, and issued on 25 Aug 1964. Here too the inventor was listed as Henry Gibson, and the owner was the Kelton Corporation. So, patents were filed for the Peter-Austin version of the toy in 1961 in both the U.S. and Canada. 

That scan over on the right is the diagram from the U.S. patent, and you can see that the components are pretty close to Kenner's girder and panel parts. Except in this case the horizontal and vertical girders are joined by a pin-and-lug system, whereas the Kenner toy used a notch-and-insert system. Interestingly, in the patent's References Cited section it notes the patent for Kenner's Girder and Panel set, U. S. patent # 3,002,315.

There seems to be a little weirdness in Kenner's U.S. patents. There appears to be a second patent for the same toy, U.S. patent # 3,132,443. I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know exactly what's up with this, but both were filed on 13 Aug 1957, although one was issued on 3 Oct 1961, and the other on 12 May 1964. The key point is that the patents were filed in 1957, which was the year the Kenner toy first hit the market.

Top: Kenner; Bottom: Peter-Austin

Comparing the Kenner and Peter-Austin parts I can see the ones from the Peter-Austin set use the joining technology specified in their patent. Which I know should be obvious, but it's good to recognize that each company used the joining method they had a patent for, suggesting that wholesale appropriation likely didn't occur because I can't imagine either company wanted to become embroiled with blatant patent violations.

Now, back to that Trans Canada Highway Bridge Set box. On the side, in rather tiny print, it's stated: U.S.A. and Canadian Patents Pending. From what we've seen with the patents, for this to be true, this toy shouldn't have been released until 1961, probably late 1961 in time for Christmas, or maybe even 1962. I don't think it was released in 1956 as suggested by the Vales. The patents don't appear to support the Vale's timeline, and I would suspect if there was a rip-off, there would also have been a lawsuit.

So, here's what I'm thinking: Kenner didn't rip-off Peter-Austin's design. I speculate the Peter-Austin sets, although they look a lot like the Kenner sets, are an offering to cash-in on the market established by Kenner for these toys. Maybe Peter-Austin hoped that with some sort of Canadian-ness to their product, that would be enough of a differentiator to oust Kenner in the Canadian market.

One last thing, the set's name: Trans Canada Highway Bridge Set. Construction started on the real Trans-Canada Highway in 1950, but it didn't officially open until 1962. Was this toy named to honour that event and cash-in on the hoopla?

Well, this is the internet, so this is more-or-less just speculation, but the pieces seem to be coming together :-) I'll keep you posted if more comes up.

Model trains in the Girder & Panel planning books

Last week I bought what looks like the remains of a Girder & Panel Set #7. I think it's one of the large sets that dates from 1959 that allows you to build both buildings and bridges.

I say I bought the remains as the 'set' was just a large bag of horizontal girders, vertical girders, signs, flag posts, and bridge diagonals, as well as joiners and plates; however, it included only 3 rather beat up wall panels, and no road panels or masonite bases. But, for all those structural components, as well as 3 instruction and planning manuals, it was a good deal at $20 US. I'll write more on the components in a later post.

I was curious to see what kind of model railroading projects the books suggested you could build. I wasn't disappointed.

I've scanned the pages illustrating the railroad-related projects, but they're just a small sample of all the things the good folks at Kenner showed could be built.

Over on the left is the Railroad Terminal Building from the back page of the Set #7 instruction manual. It's clearly for HO scale trains.

Look at that amazing railroad bridge on the cover of the planning book for the Bridge and Turnpike Building Set. Ok, well, the entire cover is an orgy of bridges, but you've got to give them credit at Kenner that they really did a good job of showing all the different types of bridges that could be built with their parts.

When you flip through its pages its something of a mini-course in bridge engineering. Most of the bridges are for automobile traffic, but the last page and back cover have some railroad bridges. The last couple pages of my book have a bite taken out of them, but the gist of the projects is still clear.

Down in the lower right corner of the back page, Kenner has this to say about scale:

You can combine all these sets to build larger structures such as the Railroad Bridge and Trestle on the cover, which is a combination of No. 4 and No. 5 Bridge and Turnpike Sets. Same scale as "H-O" gauge trains; can also be used with "O" gauge.

The Vales noted that the sets were for O scale, but from the pictures used throughout the instruction and planning books, as well as statements like the above, the target audience was clearly young HO-scalers.

The planning book for the Girder and Panel Building Set doesn't include many train related projects other than a small railroad station on page 5 and ...

... a warehouse with an elevated siding down in the lower right corner of the back cover. 

However, the front cover shows the happy owner that trains as well as planes, automobiles, and trucks are all easily accommodated by this toy.

I couldn't find advertisements for the Girder and Panel toy in old issues of either Model Railroader or Railroad Model Craftsman, but since these products were targeted for the toy market and not serious hobbyists, maybe that isn't surprising. I must say though the toy does embody some real engineering concepts for a young audience, so it's not without its prototypical merits.

Mr. Abernathy introduces the 1957 Girder & Panel set

"Yeah, they're doing it on 5th Avenue now as a matter of fact." But, I ask, what about Toronto?

It’s Skyline for 1956

Page 31 of 1956 Eaton's Christmas Catalogue

As it’s alleged that the Peter-Austin Manufacturing Company released both their Structural Building Set and Trans Canada Bridge Set toys only in 1956, I was curious to see if Eaton’s carried them in their 1956 Christmas catalog. Luckily for me the only Eaton’s Christmas Catalog scan from the 1950s I could find online was the one from 1956. Unluckily for me, the toys were nowhere to be found.

Page 30 of 1956 Eaton's Christmas Catalogue

Regardless, the search wasn’t in vain. Look at these toy train pages. On page 31, down in the bottom right, you can see an ad for Sta-Lox bricks, confirming that there was some Peter-Austin stuff in the catalog. But, look what’s beside it where I thought I’d see an ad for the Structural Building Set: a toy Eaton’s describes on page 30 as “Skyline” Plastic Construction Sets. Wikipedia calls it: American Skyline. It was manufactured by a Chicago company, Elgo Plastics / Halsam Products Company. Here’s what the Eaton’s catalog says about the Skyline toy:

Developed after years of study of children’s play habits and designed to bring out their creative ability in building true-to-life skyscrapers. True architectural scale-unit parts make it easy to assemble many fine models (1/8-inch per foot, actual size). Interlocking pieces of simple design with three basic parts - made of strong, flexible Plastic for safe play. Precision-fitting. Building units combine artistically with the simulated tile sections provided for floors and roofs. Fine, modern building kits for hours of creative fun. Colourfully boxed.

27-P-575, 229-piece set. Price, del’d…2.59

27-P-574. 476-piece set. Price, del’d…4.95

27-P-573, 723-piece set. Price, del’d…7.95

Lower right corner of page 31: Sta-Lox & Skyline

For reference, those prices are in Canadian dollars, and that top-of-the-line set would cost around $77.50 CDN in today’s money.

A proper investigation would search all Eaton’s catalogues from the 1950s and early 1960s for the elusive toys, but until I either find them online, or at a brick-and-mortar library, that’ll be an activity for the future.

Peter-Austin case file update

Peter-Austin Structural Building Set, No. 511 / girderpanel

There were a few good finds after this morning's post. I was again chatting with Vince about this investigation, and it dawned on me to check the Eaton's and Simpson's 1956 catalogues, especially the Christmas ones. I could only find covers, and with this failure I decided to reread the girder and panel section in the Vale's book, especially all the references. This time I remembered I could look for their reference to girderpanel.com in the Wayback Machine even though girderpanel.com appears to be long gone.

That did the trick and I was able to find the page about the Peter-Austin 'Girder and Panel' sets. The Wayback Machine has site snapshots from a variety of dates. The Vales noted they referred to the site on 18 Nov 2011. The last 2011 Wayback snapshot is from 11 July, and that's the one I'll link to here, but I should check the others for further updates.

There appear to be 5 sets, 2 are named, numbered, and come in colourful boxes, and the 3 others are simply referred to as 'Building Set', with set numbers and boxed parts, but it appears that any decorative retail boxes are missing. 

Peter-Austin Highway Bridge Set, No. 500 / girderpanel

I like the name of set No. 500. I thought it might be giving a nod to the Trans-Canada Highway, but that didn't officially exist until 1962, and this set was released in 1956.

The box art on the blandly named Structural Building Set, No. 511, is surprisingly good. It has an iconic late-50s modern vibe, and at the same time is a fairly accurate depiction of what's in the box. 

Speaking of what's in the box, girderpanel.com has a page that compares the various parts in the Peter-Austin, Kenner, and other releases. You can see for yourself the strong similarities - the parts are nearly identical.

Ok, even though the girders and panels are highly similar between the 1956 Peter-Austin version and the 1957 and beyond Kenner releases, that doesn't confirm the Vales' speculation as there might have been some business arrangement between the two companies regarding this toy. girderpanel.com doesn't have anything to add to the story. I'm thinking what actually happened is somewhere between the story the Vales assert and the one confidently given at Wikipedia. Maybe there's more out there waiting to be found.

Unsolved Mystery: The Case of the Peter-Austin Mfg. Co. Girder and Panel Set

Etch A Sketch* / Sourced from the National Museums Scotland

After reading that the Girder and Panel construction toy was invented by the Peter-Austin Manufacturing Company of Toronto I had to try and find some more information about the company, and hopefully about the toy. I’ll let you in on this post’s ending if you want to bail out early: there isn’t much online other than some fragments of company history, and nothing about the toy. In this post I thought I'd try to piece those fragments together before continuing investigations.

Company origins

CrayonCollecting.com tells me the company was founded by two brothers, Peter and Austin Kelk, hence the name Peter-Austin Manufacturing Company.

On the Sta-Lox can, the company is listed as: Peter-Austin Manufacturing Company, Division of Kelton Corporation Limited Toronto, Canada. From the look of the can, I’d say that instance of the product dates from the early to mid 1960s. Also, I speculate the ‘Kel’ in Kelton derives from Kelk, the brothers' last name. I don’t know how the companies were structured, but CAN1 Business tells me Kelton Corp was registered in Canada on 9 December 1948, made its last annual corporate filing in 1984, and held its last Annual General Meeting on 23 May 1984. Was Peter-Austin ever a stand alone company? Was it always a division of Kelton? Were there re-organizations where one became a division of the other? I don’t know. I think all I can speculate at this time is that the company, in some form or the other, existed from the late 1940s to the mid 1980s.

Where was the company located? CAN1 Business and Vince tell me Kelton Corporation was at 240 Madison Avenue in Toronto. I don't know if that was just the location of the head office, or the entire operation. According to Google Street View Toronto's Madison Avenue is now the site of a lot of tony residential real estate.

Vince also alerted me to an entry in the 1965 issue of Might's Greater Toronto City Directory that lists Peter Austin Mfg. Co. as being located at 314 - 326 Davenport Rd. Maybe the factory was on Davenport Road, and the headquarters, which might have been the Kelk residence, was on Madison Avenue?

A little Kelk family history

The online book, Kerrimuir Road on Lake of Bays, published by the Lake of Bays Heritage Foundation, has a little bit of Austin Kelk’s family history regarding their farm at 1071 Kerrimuir Road, which was originally built and owned by a John Edwin Brown in 1929:

In 1960, the farm was sold to the Kelk family. Norman Kelk purchased the property to enjoy lakeside living as opposed to farming and so the pastures have, over time, reverted to forest. The Kelk family enjoyed other pursuits, like boating and area residents remember the 1933 model, 21-foot Sachau Marine launch, Glida, with its distinctive wide beam and riveted hull. 

The Kelks were on Lake of Bays prior to purchasing their current property. In the early 1940’s, it was reported in the newspaper that Norman Kelk’s son Austin, when he was a lad, designed and built the S. S. Victory along with Donald Dyment. They used the remains of an old punt and the sides of packing cases to build this cruise ship. It had a tall, stove pipe boiler 9 and a cow bell signal system. While it looked like a steamer, the boys paddled the vessel and gave rides to paying customers. In doing so, they raised $25 in the Baysville area, for the British Victims Fund during World War 2. 

Later, Austin Kelk left lingering memories the children of Baysville during the 1970’s. On Christmas Eve, many would await his anticipated arrival in his station wagon full of toys. Mr. Kelk would delight them with a choice of one toy from his magnificent collection. He was the “Austin" in Peter Austin Toys, who manufactured the Etch-a-Sketch, the Bake-O-Matic and other well-remembered toys. His big-heartedness made Christmas magical for area kids. 

Austin Kelk passed away in 2003. The property remains in the Kelk family today with Cathy Kelk now enjoying the beautiful views and breezes from the lake.

What about toy museums?

There’s not a lot of information about Peter-Austin in the toy museums I’ve checked; in fact, there’s almost nothing. I would have expected the Canadian Museum of History to have something as they have what is probably the largest historical collection in Canada of children’s toys made by Canadian manufacturers. They have a couple of items in their collection as well as this rather grim death notice:

The advances in toy manufacturing made over the previous quarter century were wiped out in the late 1950s and early 1960s when the Canadian toy industry virtually collapsed under the pressure of increased competition from American and Japanese companies.

Peter-Austin / Kelton seemed to have been hitting its stride in that era, and apparently were able to avoid the reaper for another two decades.

Hopefully, I’m just looking in the wrong museums and something will turn up elsewhere.

Toys

Peter-Austin appears to have manufactured a lot of different toys; however, it's not clear to me which ones they made under licence and which were of their own invention. Here's a partial list of the toys they were said to have manufactured: Etch A Sketch, Magnajector, Little Miss Korking Set, Play Doh, Sta-Lox Bricks, Kiddie Color and Hobby Crayons, Bake-O-Matic, Sister Susie Sewing Kit, Bat 'n Button Tennis. No doubt there were many more.

What about their 1956 Girder and Panel Set? So far I can't find anything more about it. No pictures; no information other than some stray acknowledgments that Peter-Austin made it; no nothing. I'm still looking. Frankly, until I can find photos of the Peter-Austin version of the toy, I'll have to take the Vale's origin story with a grain-of-salt. The Girder and Panel Wikipedia article makes no mention of the Kelks, and presents quite a different origin story. Not that I believe Wikipedia is the supreme source of all knowledge, just that I need something substantial to support the Vale's version.

Scale

The Vale's note,

The original Girder and Panel sets, both Canadian and American, were of a scale that fitted with the O gauge model trains that were the American norm; these were made by firms including Lionel (still making trains in 2012), American Flyer, and, for the poorer boys, Marx.

From various online sites, the Vale's pictures in the book, and my recollection, I think the sets were closer to HO than O. It's true that the 1950s were a big time for O gauge toy trains, but HO, even though it was invented in the 1920s, was coming into its own in the late 1950s and was well on its way to dominating the model railroading marketplace. This doesn't mean the girder and panel sets couldn't be used with O gauge trains, just that I think the sets were sized smaller so they were somewhat compatible with both O and HO, not too mention keeping costs down. Much like the Pretty Village play sets of an earlier era, the girder and panel sets likely appeared on many model railroads regardless of gauge. Although I had a girder and panel set as a boy, it was long gone by the time I started with model railroading, so it unfortunately never appeared on my layout. If I ever buy another one of those sets I'll have to run my own scale tests and see for myself :-)

So endeth my case notes.....

*You might be asking, what's with the Etch A Sketch picture in a post about the Girder and Panel set? Well, when I came across that photo I had a flashback as I clearly recall that box it came in. Memories, can't control 'em :-)

[4 Nov 2021, morning update: It looks like the Wayback Machine has a copy of the website the Vale's reference in their book, www.girderpanel.com, and it contains pictures of the Peter-Austin 1956 sets: https://web.archive.org/web/20110711094053/http://www.girderpanel.com/ . The Vale's note they referenced the site on 18 Nov 2011. The last 2011 site copy the Wayback Machine has is for 11 July 2011, so hopefully that one will have the information I'm looking for. Stay tuned]

Sta-Lox Bricks

Front and back views of Vince's Sta-Lox Bricks can

Not long after I made yesterday's post Vince called me up and told me he had an old Sta-Lox Building Bricks can in his garage. Not the bricks, just the can. He mentioned that he too had a set of these bricks when he was a kid, and loved building things with it. This isn't the can to that set, but one acquired decades later at a vintage goods store in Toronto.

Even so, the can itself is quite interesting. First, there's the list of pieces in this set: 600 bricks in assorted shapes; 14 doors and windows; 9 sidewalks, stairs, awnings and gardens; 2 sheets of roofing. And then there's that little extra piece of information: the Peter-Austin Manufacturing Company was a division of Kelton Corporation Limited, also of Toronto. I don't know what year this set was sold, but maybe by that time Peter-Austin had been acquired by Kelton. More questions for the internet.

Architecture on the Carpet

It’s true that you can’t tell a book by its cover, but there are a few books I buy just on the promise of the cover art and title. That’s the case with this one.

The title was quite intriguing, Architecture on the Carpet: The Curious Tale of Construction Toys and the Genesis of Modern Buildings, written by Brenda and Robert Vale and published by Thames & Hudson in 2013. I don’t think I’d be unduly giving anything away by saying the subtitle is a little misleading. The book’s premise is that building construction toys of the19th and 20th centuries may have had a crucial role in determining the work of modern architects who played with them in their childhood, and on the perception and acceptance of modernism in the general public. In the end the authors come to the conclusion that only a few famous architects of modern buildings might have been influenced by their childhood building construction toys. However, that doesn’t discredit the book at all. The reader isn’t beaten about the head and shoulders with the thesis, but it seems more of a lightly applied structuring device to present the fascinating history of these toys, and speculate on what their influences on the built world may have been. The book’s highly readable and I recommend it.

Of all the toy stories presented, the one about Kenner’s Girder and Panel construction sets in the chapter, Bilt-E-Z, Girder and Panel, Arkitex and the Brave New World, was the one that had the most personal resonance. Sometime in the 1960s I was given one of those Kenner sets as a Christmas present. Kenner produced a wide variety of sets, and I don’t know which one I had other than it must have been fairly big as I recall I could build from it a lot of small buildings or something quite large. It was my favourite toy, but I remember that after much use the little holes that held the panels to the girders tore, making construction a challenge. 

I was surprised to learn that the toy we know today as the Kenner Girder and Panel set was invented and sold by a Toronto firm called Peter-Austin Manufacturing Company in 1956, and the version that Kenner first released in 1957 was more-or-less an exact copy. The Vales speculate the Kenner product was “what appears to be a commercial rip-off”, not something sold under license. Being Toronto born and raised, I thought that was interesting. I then cruised the internet looking for more information about the Peter-Austin company and found that they also sold a building toy called Sta-Lox Miniature Building Bricks, a tube of which I also owned and played with a lot at the time. I continue to learn something new - or maybe old in this case - everyday :-)

What about our old friends the Pretty Village play sets? They aren’t discussed in the book, but there’s an extensive discussion on the dawn of model railway toys with a focus on station models.

Overall this is an excellent book on a particular genre of toys. It also has an extensive notes section whose references may unlock even more interesting material. I can see many nights of good reading ahead.

Floor Games Redux

Reprint published by Monroe St. Press, 2016

I downloaded a copy of Floor Games in ebook form a few years ago. The text was complete, but it lacked the original's photographs. As I've been thinking a lot about layouts these days, I wanted to find a copy that had the photos as I was curious to see what Wells was talking about. I recently bought a 2016 reprint published by Monroe St. Press that contained both Floor Games and Little Wars, and included all photos for both. 

Overall it's an excellent edition with complete text and an interesting introduction by E. M. Spencer on where these books fit into play and wargaming history (you may recall such a thoughtful introduction was sadly missing from the reprint of Hobbs' Pictorial House Modelling). 

In the introduction Spencer reminds the reader that Floor Games was a key inspiration in the development of Margaret Lowenfeld's 1929 World Technique and Sandplay therapies in the field of child psychology, which are still in use today. There's even a Canadian association devoted to Sandplay. 

My only quibble with this reprint is that the photos in Floor Games seem a little coarse, and stair-stepping is visible in a few. Little Wars has better resolution photos.

Quibbling aside, I'm glad I bought this edition because the photos are an eye-opener. So much so that now when I give Floor Games a reading, to me it appears like a very early treatise on how to build rather interesting model railway layouts using lots of scratchbuilding and an eclectic mix of found objects. And it has a very expansive view of what constitutes operation, more expansive than what we're used to today. I recommend having a look at the photos in the book and comparing them with the photos of Aldo Cosomati's layout in the December 1933 edition of The Model Railway News. The enthusiasm, creativity, organization, and variety of Wells' and Cosomati's approaches are strikingly similar even though the implementation details are different. 

Scratchbuilding? In 1911? Wells states that the he didn't like the city building toys available in stores:

Of course, it goes without saying that we despise those foolish, expensive, made-up wooden and pasteboard castles that are sold in shops - playing with them is like playing with somebody else's dead game in a state of rigor mortis.

What he and his sons used instead were a vast collection of wooden blocks that measured 4 1/2" x 2 1/4" x 1 1/8" made by a carpenter, and handed down to them by some friends who had outgrown the toys. Wells and sons used them much like people use Lego today, to build all manner of things they could imagine. Lego didn't exist then, although various sorts of wooden building blocks did, and I imagine making your own blocks was a cost effective means of getting a lot of them.  And, honestly, take a look at the photos of the model cities on pages 10 to 12 of the reprint, and you can see for yourself the imagination and detail achieved with those blocks and planks. 

Speculating, I'd say that Wells would look down on using Pretty Village toy buildings, and was a guy who didn't truck with store bought stuff, but was a scratchbuilder at heart, and wanted to instil the pleasures of scratchbuilding in his sons :-)

Speaking of building blocks, I'm reading Brenda and Robert Vale's Architecture on the Carpet: The Curious Tale of Construction Toys and the Genesis of Modern Buildings published in 2013, and surprisingly it has a lot to say about building block toys of the 19th and 20th centuries. I didn't realize such a simple toy had such a long and interesting history. More later when I've finished the book.

One thing you'll also notice in the Floor Games photos is that there are soldiers all over the game's terrain as well as military related items even though war games aren't being played. I think that's because in 1911 there wasn't the vast choice of miniature figures and civilian accessories we have today, and Wells and sons made do with what they had as Wells explains in great detail. Wells expresses a desire for civilian figures, especially since they'd turn the game away from "swashbuckling soldiery" and open up game play to "much more fun":

Then we have "beefeaters," (Footnote: The warders in the Tower of London are called "beefeaters"; the origin of the term is obscure) Indians, Zulus, for whom there are special rules. We find we can buy lead dogs, cats, lions, tigers, horses, camels, cattle, and elephants of a reasonably corresponding size, and we have serval boxes of railway porters, and some soldiers we bought in Hesse-Darmstadt that we pass off on an unsuspecting home world as policemen. But we want civilians very badly. We found a box of German from an exaggerated curse of militarism, and even the grocer wears epaulettes. This might please Lord Roberts and Mr. Leo Maxse, but it certainly does not please us. I wish, indeed, that we could buy boxes of tradesmen: a blue butcher, a white baker with a loaf of standard bread, a merchant or so; boxes of servants, boxes of street traffic, smart sets, and so forth. We could do with a judge and lawyers, or a box of vestrymen. It is true that we can buy Salvation Army lasses and football players, but we are cold to both of these. We have, of course, boy scouts. With such boxes of civilians we could have much more fun than with the running, marching, swashbuckling soldiery that pervades us. They drive us to reviews; and it is only emperors, kings, and very silly small boys who can take an undying interest in uniforms and reviews.

Overall I'm glad I bought a copy of Floor Games with photos. I suspect there're things in the photos I'm not appreciating right now, so it might still have surprises in future readings. Also, those photos in Little Wars are intriguing and I need to give it a read too.