From when Minecraft was analog - a stunning example of a visual toy assembly instruction manual
Erector sets let kids build things with metal parts, nuts and bolts, and little motors. They had their owns singular look and feel, like little pieces of streamlined steel. These things took a lot of careful observation and thought.
This 1925 manual of instruction come from A.C. Gilbert’s set number four, which had 235 parts that let you build 500 models! The manual is sixty pages long, showing finished assemblies. The artist (s) had to make sure every drawing was precisely accurate so the models could be built that way in real life. Every screw had to be shown in the correct position. There’s something kind of beautiful about these pages, with their dreamlike parade of bridges, wagons, velocipedes, cranes, railroad cars, and even a buzzsaw (see photo).
The cover is loose and in two parts. Interior pages show age and wear but are supple, with binding solid.
There is a terrifically informative illustrated Erector Set Guidebook in PDF form available here.
From when Minecraft was analog - a stunning example of a visual toy assembly instruction manual
Erector sets let kids build things with metal parts, nuts and bolts, and little motors. They had their owns singular look and feel, like little pieces of streamlined steel. These things took a lot of careful observation and thought.
This 1925 manual of instruction come from A.C. Gilbert’s set number four, which had 235 parts that let you build 500 models! The manual is sixty pages long, showing finished assemblies. The artist (s) had to make sure every drawing was precisely accurate so the models could be built that way in real life. Every screw had to be shown in the correct position. There’s something kind of beautiful about these pages, with their dreamlike parade of bridges, wagons, velocipedes, cranes, railroad cars, and even a buzzsaw (see photo).
The cover is loose and in two parts. Interior pages show age and wear but are supple, with binding solid.
There is a terrifically informative illustrated Erector Set Guidebook in PDF form available here.