Chemistry Sets and Other Scientific Toys

A.C. Gilbert Company began selling chemistry sets in 1922. These sets taught basic chemical knowledge through a series of experiments. Gilbert took advantage of his Yale connections to add to the educational value of the toys: the company’s early instruction manuals were co-edited by Treat Baldwin Johnson, an organic chemist and Sterling Professor at Yale, and E. M. Shelton, one of Johnson's graduate students. The Company later sold microscopes, as well as sets covering other subjects such as mineralogy and physics.

Some of the A.C. Gilbert microscope sets were specially designed to encourage young women to explore science. The language used to market those sets is now old-fashioned, as is the idea that women’s scientific goal should be working as a lab technician, rather than a research scientist. At the time, however, it was very progressive to suggest girls might be interested in science at all.

In the 1950s, A.C. Gilbert Company kept up with modern science, offering Geiger counters to measure radioactivity and sets to explore atomic energy. These sets, like ones introduced by other scientific toy companies in the period, were soon discontinued because of the risk of exposure to radioactive materials.