Richard James' "Toy and Process of Use," patented January 28, 1947 This Friday, on National Slinky Day, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission will be installing a historical marker to commemorate the invention of the toy in Clifton Heights, the Philadelphia suburb where it was first manufactured. There were 400 Slinkys stocked that day, and they were gone in less than two hours-selling for $1 a pop, or about $14 in today’s value. How could a bundle of wire be a toy? The Jameses managed to convince a Gimbel’s department store in Philadelphia to let them do a demonstration during the Christmas shopping season in 1945. In 1944, she scoured the dictionary for a fitting name, landing on “slinky,” which means “sleek and sinuous in movement or outline.” Together, with a $500 loan, they co-founded James Industries in 1945, the year the Slinky hit store shelves.Īt first, folks didn’t know what to make of it. He kept an open mind and found a different use for it.”Īs Jonathon Schifman reported for Popular Mechanics, Richard James went home and told his wife, Betty James, about his idea.
“It wasn’t something he was setting out for-it’s more serendipitous than that. It wasn’t an obvious idea for a toy,” she says.
“The Slinky was something that he saw happen and he thought it was cool. A lot of inventors talk about keeping an open mind and maintaining playful habits, explains Monica Smith, the head of exhibitions at Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation. But he-as inventors often do-had a second thought: perhaps this would make a good toy. As the story goes, he dropped the coiled wires he was tinkering with on the ground and watched them tumble end-over-end across the floor.Īfter dropping the coil, he could have gotten up, frustrated, and chased after it without a second thought.
In 1943, mechanical engineer Richard James was designing a device that the Navy could use to secure equipment and shipments on ships while they rocked at sea. As its jingle once cheered: “A spring, a spring, a marvelous thing! Everyone knows it’s Slinky.” The coiled toy certainly is a marvelous, if simplistic, thing.
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