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Factory of Dreams A History of Meccano Ltd, 1901-1979 by Kenneth Brown Hardcover - Picture 1 of 2

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Factory of Dreams: A History of Meccano Ltd, 1901-1979 by Kenneth D. Brown (Hardcover, 2007)

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Meccano - few other names are so calculated, even a quarter of a century or so after the company's closure, to mist the eyes of the (mainly, but by no means - exclusively) male generations who grew up in Britain or its empire during the twentieth century and whose childhood leisure hours were so happily passed in playing with the products of Meccano Ltd's Liverpool factory. Meccano was - and for long remained - the most successful brand name toy in Britain, the invention of Frank Hornby, a Liverpool businessman who started manufacturing rudimentary construction sets under the trade-name 'Mechanics Made Easy' in 1901. Soon the name was changed to Meccano (apparently an elision of the words 'make' and 'know'). In time the company also developed the highly popular Hornby train sets, and later the even more successful range of Dinky model vehicles. All three products - Meccano, Hornby and Dinky - became eponymous terms among the population as a whole, an achievement which probably no other toy company anywhere in the world has ever matched. Factory of Dreams provides the first comprehensive history of the company behind these famous names. How exactly did Frank Hornby build his small Liverpool engineering firm into an international enterprise? Who were the men alongside him? How did Hornby's legacy affect developments after his death? Why was the company unable to adjust to the more challenging trading environment of the 1960s? What effect did successive take-overs of the company have? Were the trade unions the ultimate cause of the company's demise? Drawing on surviving company archives to an unparalleled extent, these are just some of the issues addressed in this lively survey, written by a leading economic historian who has published widely on the history of the toy business.