Talk:Erector Set

Pictures

I'd like to see a picture of the "Mysterious Walking Giant". 195.159.10.101 09:02, November 6, 2006 (UTC)

Heck, I think this article needs any pictures of an erector set. :) Cburnett 05:16, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

1911

Could someone who knows clarify why the thing was patented in 1901 but invented in 1911? Cheers. --198.128.26.82 (talk) 01:22, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Clearly an error; thanks for pointing it out and letting me correct it. Jim.henderson (talk) 18:46, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Gilbert and Meccano?

The metal construction set that was patented in 1901 was Meccano. Meccano started being sold in the US in 1909, so the Erector sets' feature that they could be assembled and disassembled was not exactly unique.

The interrelationships between Meccano Ltd in the UK, Meccano Inc. in the US, and Gilbert and Lionel seems to be a little muddy. Lionel may or may not have produced Meccano's first 4V electric motor, and may or may not have owned Meccano's US factory in New Jersey, and may or may not have been the reason why the factory was sold to Gilbert in around 1928 (to raise cash?), and may or may not be the reason why the factory had stopped producing trains (because Lionel also made trains), leaving Gilbert ... manufacturing Meccano as well as their own system?

I've seen it said that Meccano-based sets may have been quietly sold under the Gilbert Erector name for some time, but given the strongly patriotic "American" branding of Erector, I suppose that it's conceivable that if the owners had dropped "real Erector" and switched to sets based on a "foreign" product, they might not have felt inclined to mention it.

This all seems really twisty - at some point, the people who owned the Meccano brandnames are then supposed to have bought the Erector brandname, too, so the Meccano factory in Calais, France, currently produces "modern" Meccano sets under both the Meccano and Erector names, depending on which territory the sets are to be sold in.

There's an "American Meccano" website at http://www.usmeccano.com , but even the site owner seems to have trouble unravelling the exact sequence of events ( http://www.usmeccano.com/questions/questions.htm )! I'm not going to pretend to know what really happened, if if anyone out there knows, it'd be great if they could fill the rest of us in. ErkDemon (talk) 01:47, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Agree. If Meccano was on the market first, Erector couldn't have been unique. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:56, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Improvements badly needed

I have made a first cut at reworking the article, but it needs a lot more work. As I first found it, the article was a hogepodge of poorly-organized random claims, almost completely uncited. There is still very little description of the product itself, with the unwarranted implicit assumption that "everyone knows" what it is already. Significant points, like Erector's often-promoted ability to make a strong steel structural "girder" from 4 pieces of stamped sheet metal, are completely unmentioned. There are few clues about what kinds or complexity of assemblages could be produced. Surely, there exist more photos to illustrate what the article is talking about.

The history section needs to focus on the Erector line itself, and not try to duplicate coverage that belongs in the article on A.C. Gilbert Company or its founder. Most of the article is completely uncited. Reliable sources exist, and should be added. Reify-tech (talk) 17:08, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

Agreed. Also, I would request that almost all mention of similar products be removed from the Applications section of this page (Meccano, etc.), for the sole (and what should be glaringly obvious) reason that the title of this article is "Erector Set"; it is *not* a general page about scaled steel toy mechanics sets. If other editors want such a page, then it can be created. Erector Set by A.C. Gilbert has a separate and independent history that spanned nearly 100 years before the company was absorbed by another. As such, any Meccano-specific applications should be removed from this page, especially those before 2000, the year of the buyout by Meccano. The history (and application history) of these two products, for the purposes of accuracy should be kept apart. Attempts to sloppily merge these separate histories are nothing more than cheesy marketing tricks that should remain with a manufacturer's website. Again, this is not a Meccano marketing webpage. Besides the latter-day buyout of the Erector brand, there may be an attempt by some editors at backdoor justification for merging the two Application histories through hearsay ("I've seen it said ... may have been") concerning a dubious claim that Meccano sets were once rebranded as Erector, because of "patriotism" (charges of misplaced nationalism being found on opposite sides of the same door, please note). However, if this is the case, provide independent citable proof. Records of independently verifiable purchase orders, invoices and the like would begin to meet Wikipedia standards. Failing that, merging the histories of the two separate brands should be excluded from this article.71.112.241.118 (talk) 19:42, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

I agree that the Meccano information does not belong here, but should be in the Meccano article. The Erector and Meccano lines have different if parallel histories, but conflating them together will cause even more confusion among readers who may already be confused by the current marketing and branding. Reify-tech (talk) 20:38, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

Hello and it appears the Meccano article is also in need of clarification for the same reasons. Editors there have claimed Erector's history and applications as those of Meccano's when that is both untrue and historically inaccurate. Although Erector brand was purchased by Meccano, they both have their own histories, in parallel as you accurately described. While it is important to note that the Erector brand was purchased by Meccano in the Meccano article, that is precisely where any "history sharing" should begin and end.

Put simply, there is Meccano having begun in 1898, there was Erector having started in 1913 and there is now Erector by Meccano, having begun in 2000, all separate entities with their own respective histories. Perhaps a better and cleaner way to sort all this out, for the sake of accuracy and to avoid the Meccano intrusion into this article (and vice versa), is to consider that the A.C. Gilbert Erector Set is strictly history, where this article would begin with the words "Erector Set (trademark styled as "ERECTOR") **was** a brand of metal toy construction sets ...". A new (and linked) article would then be started for "Erector by Meccano", with that article subbed directly to Meccano. Thoughts?71.112.241.118 (talk) 22:32, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

Yes, the Meccano article seems to have been hit by the same editor User:Celliott1029 who thought it would be a good idea to have the Erector Set article contain identical duplicate content. I checked, and was relieved to find that they only did some hit-and-run editing to the Erector/Meccano articles on 2018-04-10, and have not been active since then. Since you already have removed the irrelevant and duplicated Meccano material from here, I leave it to you to do a similar cleanup on the Meccano article. There seems to be lot of promotional language and textual formatting there as well, but I will discuss or work on it over there.

I have already created a Erector by Meccano article as a simple redirect to the Meccano article. I agree that with the end of Erector as a separate entity, the article here is primarily historical, and I have made this clearer in the article intro here.

I own a physical copy of the Bruce Watson book, which I have added to "Further reading" here, and have used to add the first (and only so far) footnotes to the article. I will add more footnote references as I have time and interest, and will look for more independent reference sources. Your assistance in finding further references would be most welcome. Reify-tech (talk) 15:29, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

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Advertisement?

> "Erector remains a very versatile constructional medium. Almost any mechanical device can be built with this system, from structures, to complex working cranes, automatic gearboxes or clocks. It is frequently used to prototype new ideas and inventions. Model realization using Erector is limited only by the imagination and ingenuity of the builder."

I dunno man, seems kinda endorsement-ish to me... should we remove it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by FailSandwich (talk • contribs) 03:23, 4 March 2021 (UTC)