Construction Toys - Beam and Bolt
Beam and Beam / beam and boltMeccano/Erector/Märklin
Meccano(1901) is the first modern construction toy system. All previous constrution toys were purely architectural - suitable only for building a specific house model. It was a British invention. The initial invention was by Frank Hornby 1898 but commercial production did not start until 1901. In 1912 Meccano licensed Märklin in Berlin. Märklin has been producing systems off and on ever since.
Erector(1913) A. C. Gilbert was, supposedly, inspired by watching the construction of a power line tower to come up with his beam and beam (or beam and bolt) system. Nice story, but in any event he did design a system superior to Meccano. In particular, the Erector beams have a flange plus many of the supplied beams had a 90 degree longitudinal fold which allows easy construction of one of the strongest of all forms - the hollow box (which did not show up in civil engineering until the construction of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge 1922-1926 at Philadelphia).
Erector/Meccano systems (EMS) have a great deal of flexibility. The kits consist of girders that are usually stamped out of sheet steel and coated or painted. These girders are further drilled at regular intervals with threaded (tapped) bolt holes. With both Erector and Meccano the interval is 0.5" (12.7 mm).
Basic advantages:
- Structures can be planned and mapped out fairly simply as long as the grid interval is appropriate.
- Assembly is by bolting girders together providing for fairly straightforward construction.
- Assembly is by bolting girders together. Some sort of re-usable rivet or other snap system is needed to move EMS into the 21st century.