The Slinky toy has been enjoyed by generations of children since its introduction in It is a simple toy made of a coiled spring that is advertised with words to describe the many actions children can make it do: walk, bounce, spring, juggle, flip, and jiggle. The idea for inventing the Slinky was the result of an accident. Richard experimented for two years with coils of wire, and by he concluded that a flat ribbon of plain steel wire with zero tension and compression worked best to give him the end-over-end movement that he wanted.
The finished product was a 2. The Slinky was actually invented years earlier, in , when James was a mechanical engineer in a Philadelphia shipyard. The original Slinky was 2. James filed a patent for the toy the same month of its first demonstration, and it was approved in January of Despite initial retailer reluctance, the Slinky soon found its market and James quit his job to devote all his time to the project.
After Richard James left his family in to move to Bolivia to join a religious sect, his wife took over as CEO and re-energized the company, which he had gotten deeply into debt.
She continued to helm the company until , when she sold it to Poof Products. Contact us at letters time. A boy holds up a 'slinky' on June 14, By Merrill Fabry. Get our History Newsletter. 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. You can find an exact mathematical equation for the slinky in his patent materials.
In , Richard left his family behind and joined a religious cult. He died in Betty, a new single mother with six kids, took a big risk on the toy and waged the mortgage of their home to go to a toy show in New York in , as Valerie Nelson reported for the Los Angeles Times in It was there that the toy caught a second wind, again selling out. After that, the toy sort of took on a life of its own. During the Vietnam War, soldiers would sometimes use a Slinky as a portable, extendable antenna for their radios, fastening one end to themselves and tossing the other end over a tree branch to get a clear signal, according to Popular Mechanics.
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