Category:Meccano Construction Sets (display)

Display Area


4 - Meccano Construction Sets (display) Arch Two

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Most of the Museum's public Meccano collection is in or above the large Meccano cabinet in Arch Two. It's directly on your left as you enter the ticketed area of the Museum.

The centrepiece of the display is a large Meccano Block-Setting Crane, the largest official Meccano model. Around the rest of the cabinet are a selection of Meccano airplanes built with the Aeroplane Constructor outfits, and a range of Meccano parts, sets, motors, colour samples, boxes, and booklets, manuals and issues of Meccano Magazine.

Opposite the Meccano case is another cabinet of metal construction sets from other manufacturers.

History

Frank Hornby patented the basic idea of Meccano in 1901, and by 1908 the product had a proper name, a limited company making it (Meccano Ltd.), and a factory site. Although numerous copycat products appeared, Meccano Ltd considered their system to be the original and best, and with a range of ten sets, upgrade packs available that could take owners from one set to the next, a network of clubs (the Meccano Guild), and a wide range of published designs partly gleaned from Meccano model design competitions, it was difficult for other metal construction toys to compete.

For specialist models such as planes and cars, Meccano Ltd. also produced special Motor Car Constructor and Aeroplane Constructor outfits that had custom parts (but still used the same hole spacing and hole size as normal Meccano). The company also briefly flirted with the idea of meccano0style gauge 0 locomotives and rolling stock using special parts, but quickly decided to switch to more conventional factory-built toy trains, marketed under the separate Hornby Series name.