The popularity of the Slinky continued to grow, along with an expanded product line, into the 1940s and 1950s. At $1 each, that $100 million in sales, adjusted for inflation, would equal a staggering $1.43 billion in today’s dollars. Within two years, they would sell 100 million Slinky toys. Over the next year, they would sell more than a quarter-million. The first day they sold out the entire inventory of 400 Slinkys in 90 minutes-for $1 apiece (equal to $15 in 2021 dollars). In late November of 1945, the company acquired a space to exhibit their new toy at Gimbels Department Store in Philadelphia. In effect, the coils would as soon fall apart as together.Īt this point, James borrowed $500, the equivalent of close to $7,500 in 2021 dollars, to form a company that would become known as James Industries. In other words, the Slinky was able to “walk” because he had wound the 80 feet of wire loops to have zero tension or compression. Coiling 80 feet of spring wire into a 21/2 inch high stack of 98 wound loops the object could be propelled to walk by transferring its energy along its length in a longitudinal wave. Throughout the remainder of the war years Richard conducted experiments with different types of steel wire until, in 1945, he settled on one that held the right combination of material properties with the right tension and filed a patent. Flipping through a dictionary, Betty found a word that aptly described the spring’s motion: “Slinky,” meaning “graceful and sinuous in movement, line, or figure.” The word fits perfectly. He turned to the one person who would become instrumental in the Slinky’s eventual success, his wife Betty, telling her he believed he could make the spring into a toy that “walks.” She quickly realized the invention’s potential as a new toy, and even conceived the name for it. Suddenly, the idea for a coiled spring toy that could walk down steps sprang to life. The spring “stepped” end-over-end in a series of arcs until the gravitational force ceased where the object landed upright and recoiled. James watched it “walk down from its spot,” as he would later say. Rather than bounce around or flop like a traditional spring would, it, instead, pulled by gravity, began a slithering motion. But one of the prototypes, one amongst a hundred others, had the tension, diameter, dimensions, and other properties necessary for a toy. He kept them all stacked on his work desk. He had already tried and tested numerous springs of various sizes and tensions, by some accounts, hundreds. James would be developing a tension spring for an entirely different application. As it was, he was attempting to perfect a tension spring to stabilize sensitive instruments on US warships and free them of the vibration caused by the likes of gunfire, propeller shafts, and rolling seas. James wasn’t looking to invent a new children’s toy. Richard James, the founder of James Spring & Wire Company, invented the much-loved precompressed helical spring toy in 1943 while serving as a naval engineer at the William Cramp & Sons shipyards in Philadelphia. The history of the Slinky, and its humble origin, is one of innovation, imagination, and perseverance as much as it is chance.
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