Class 2003
Milton Bradley
Creative, industrious, and bold, are good adjectives for this man who was truly an innovator in many fields. Born in 1836 in Vienna, Maine, Bradley moved with his family to Lowell, Massachusetts and then to Hartford. In 1856 he took a train to Springfield and settled in, at first as a draftsman at the Wason car company, doing the drawings and overseeing construction of a private car for the Khedive of Egypt. He subsequently became interested in lithography, bought a press, and opened the first color lithography business in the state, at 247 Main Street, where he was soon printing 300 sheets a day, a very high production rate for that time.
Bradley's first big printing job began when Springfield Republican publisher Samuel Bowles suggested he reproduce a picture of Abraham Lincoln, recently nominated by the Republican National Convention. The photo sold successfully until Lincoln grew a beard, rendering the image worthless, and then Bradley turned to other pursuits.
He created and printed a parlor game called The Checkered Game of Life which, as The Game of Life, is still selling today. Because he could not use dice or cards in his game - that would be considered too close to gambling or fortune-telling - Bradley used spinners to move around the board and made the game highly moral and educational. The goal was to finish the game with a peaceful retirement after having made the proper moral decisions in life.
Bradley invented other games, including The Smashed-up Locomotive, a mechanical puzzle, and The Wheel of Life, an early version of a moving picture machine; and he manufactured a series of games for Civil War soldiers to play. He also printed manuals for games; for instance, he wrote and patented a set of rules for croquet, which soon became standard.
In 1869, Bradley became a forerunner in the movement to establish kindergartens in America. He printed the first book in English on the concept of kindergarten, and although the book didn't sell well, Bradley believed so much in children's education that he continued to print other books, including ones he wrote himself, on teaching colors to children. The first kindergarten in Springfield was taught by Bradley's father, and attended by his daughters. He soon began manufacturing counting blocks, used to help children with arithmetic.
Other Bradley inventions include the paper cutter - his original design is easily recognizable as essentially the version so common in offices today - and the color wheel used in the printing industry.
Bradley died in 1911, but the Milton Bradley Company which he founded in 1860 is now owned by Hasbro Inc., and is the largest game and puzzle maker in the world, as well as the largest manufacturer in Western Mass., with close to 2000 employees. The plant and office facility was constructed in 1962 on 20 acres of land in East Longmeadow. The company manufactures classic bestsellers such as Scrabble, Monopoly, Chutes and Ladders, Twister, Yahtzee, Candy Land, and Trivial Pursuit.
Milton Bradley could look at the world through a child's eyes, and in doing so created a company whose products made learning fun. We are proud to induct Milton Bradley into the Class of 2003 of the Western Massachusetts Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame.