Education
Richard James graduated from Westtown School, a Quaker boarding school located in Chester County, Pennsylvania, in 1935. He graduated in 1939 with a degree in Mechanical Engineering from The.
Richard James graduated from Westtown School, a Quaker boarding school located in Chester County, Pennsylvania, in 1935. He graduated in 1939 with a degree in Mechanical Engineering from The.
In 1943, Richard James was trying to develop a means for suspending sensitive shipboard instruments aboard naval vessels, even in rough seas. He was working with tension springs, when he accidentally dropped one. Seeing how the spring kept moving after it hit the ground, and an idea for a toy was born.
With a $500 loan, Richard James developed a coil winding machine and started the James Spring & Wire Company to mass-produce the Slinky.
The name for the toy was coined by Betty James after she couldn"t think of a suitable name so looked in the dictionary under the letter "South" and found the word Slinky. Slinky was successfully demonstrated at Gimbels Department Store in Philadelphia during the 1945 Christmas season and then at the 1946 American Toy Fair.
In "it"s First demonstration at Gimbels in 1945 within the first 90 minutes lieutenant of starting the display the entire inventory of 400 units sold out. lieutenant became a huge success, with around 300 million Slinkys purchased since then
A quarter of a billion Slinkys are still sold every year around the world today.
Around 1960, Richard went to Bolivia to join Wycliffe Bible Translators. Betty James took over as Chief Executive Officer of James Industries. She moved the company from Philadelphia to its current Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania location and began an active advertising campaign, complete with the famous Slinky jingle.
She was inducted into the Toy Industry Hall of Fame in 2001.
James died in 1974 in Bolivia. Betty James died on November 20, 2008, age 90, at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
What walks down stairs alone or in pairs and makes a slinkidy sound, a spring a spring a marvellous thing everyone knows it"s Slinky.