CHAPTER VII.
HOW FRANK HORNBY'S TOY GREW INTO A WORLD-WIDE INDUSTRY.

In 1903 the two rooms which had been required in place of the one little room in which the business had started, were not nearly big enough, so larger quarters were rented.
Then it was that Frank Hornby decided that he should make all of his parts himself, instead of having different manufacturers make the different parts. This meant more trouble and more struggle to get the capital to buy the costly machinery for making the parts. Cutting out and stamping metal is a difficult work. It requires experience in manufacturing. In the great metal manufacturing plants in America, there are always a great many machines which are built to order to do the particular kind of work which is required in each factory.

In a new industry like the manufacture of Meccano there were no machines ready for doing such work, so they had to be invented. Some of the machines used now are pictured in this book. However, the problems of manufacturing were finally conquered, and in another short space of time still larger quarters were required. At length Frank Hornby bought a piece of land containing two hundred and sixteen thousand square feet, that is, about five acres, and commenced the building of a big factory, so that the business could be arranged in departments and properly organized. You see in the front of this book, a picture of the great factory which now stands on this ground in Liverpool. It is a wonderful tribute to the boy grown now to be a man-who spent all his life in trying to invent something that would be useful to boys and men; a tribute to the boy who as a man did invent a toy, a useful, practical toy, that has endeared him to millions of boys all over the world.

What a satisfaction it must be today to Frank Hornby as he looks back over the years of his struggle and sees everywhere in the world men and boys playing with Meccano; building their trains, automobiles, locomotives, bridges, Ferris wheels, Eiffel towers, safes, weaving looms, sewing machines, clocks, derricks
of all kinds, trolley cars, farming machines, wire making machines, dredges, printing presses, steam shovels, swinging boats, armored motor cars, drilling machines, elevators, sky scraper buildings, pile drivers, wind-mill pumps and thousands of other mechanical, electrical and constructional models that can be made with Meccano, and when made, can be operated just like the real ones Even future Kings and Princes all over the world play with Meccano.

Scientific schools use Meccano for illustrating the principles of engineering and mechanics. Of all the praise that has come to Frank Hornby because of his great invention, there is one letter out of many thousands which has deeply affected him.
This is a letter from the parents of a poor, little bed-ridden boy who had an incurable disease and who all his life had to lie in bed. The father wrote something like this:

DEAR MECCANO :
I cannot tell you how grateful I am to you for the joy that you have given my poor little boy and that you have given to me, because of my boy's pleasure in Meccano. He must lie in bed day after day. He has an active mind. He is thinking all the time about the great things that he will build when he gets well. He does not know -poor little fellow-that he will probably never be well. He does not know what the doctor does-that he is gradually failing and will not be with us very much longer.

But he works hour after hour over his Meccano, building his bridges, his trestles, his locomotives, his automobiles and his railroad tracks, his machines, and when night comes, he is tired out, but happy, and sleeps and rests so much better than he did before.
He thinks more of his Meccano than any little girl ever could think of her baby dolls; he can't bear to have it out of his sight, so we keep it on a chair right beside his bed all the time. You have given my little boy so much happiness that I know you must have given a whole ocean of happiness to the other boys all over the world who play with Meccano. I think you have done a wonderful thing by inventing a toy which gives so much pleasure to those who play with it, and at the same time teaches the boy all about the principles of mechanics, which are so hard for him to learn when he tries to study the dry books. My little boy can tell me about the principle of the lever, the principle of the bell 90 crank, the principle of the pulley, the principle of gearing, what a suspension bridge is, how a dredge works, what a derrick does and lots of other things he has learned by playing with Meccano. How wonderful it must be as a training for strong, healthy boys who some day will go out into the big world to be the engineers who will build the bridges, the buildings, the railroad stations, the tunnels, the subways, and the battleships.
I think that the man who invented a toy of this kind, which not only gives so much pleasure, but is so educational, should be honored by his own country in an unmistakable way. Wouldn't you be proud of that kind of a letter?

Wouldn't you be proud if you had invented something which was so useful and so practical that a West African missionary should find a King of one of the savage tribes playing with it, and trying to learn these principles of modern building, of modern mechanics, in order that he could lead his ignorant people into the ways of civilization and teach them the things that even small boys in the great civilized world know ?

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