Chelsea Clock: Model Trains

Thursday, 13 September 2012

Model Trains

The eighth of nine children of immigrants and a college dropout (he enrolled both at and the , received his first patent in 1899, for a device that ignited a photographer's flash. The same year, received a defense contract from the to produce mine fuses that netted him $12,000. The following year,and one of his partners founded Lionel Corporation in

had built his first toy train at age attaching a small motor under a model of a railroad flatcar. sold his first electric train in 1901 to a store owner in Manhattan, intending to use the train to call attention to other merchandise.The store owner returned the next day to order six more trains, because customers wanted to buy the store display. By 1902, Lionel was primarily a toy train manufacturer. He started his company, the Lionel Corporation His trains continue to sell today.

Although often gave his as 1880, he was actually born three years earlier, and [legally] changed the spelling of his last name from the original Cohen in 1910,possibly to obscure his Jewish heritage.

marketing skills ultimately made him more money than his talents at invention. The tradition linking toy trains to in Germany in the mid-19th century. It was expanded by who in the owners of large department stores to incorporate elaborate train setups, which he provided, around their large hoping to increase demand among small boys for toy trains as Christmas gifts. Lionel was soon the largest of three American toy train manufacturers, and for a short time in the early Lionel was the largest toy manufacturer in the world. However, by the mid- public interest had shifted from trains to