John Lloyd Wright is granted the patent for Lincoln Logs - August 31st, 1920

On this day in 1920, John Lloyd Wright received the patent for his “Cabin Construction'' toy, otherwise known as Lincoln Logs.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Stay in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hello and Welcome to this Day in History Class,
a show for those who can never know enough about history.
I'm Gay Bluesier and in this episode we're talking about

(00:21):
a key event in the life of American architect John
Lloyd Wright, a man who lived in the shadow of
his famous father but still managed to build a legacy
of his own using tiny wooden logs. The day was

(00:43):
August thirty one. John Lloyd Wright received the patent for
his cabin construction toy, otherwise known as Lincoln Logs. His
invention was a set of notched wooden building logs of
various sizes, which could be securely stacked and arranged to
form a miniature cabin or any number of other things.

(01:06):
Wright wanted kids to have fun building, but he also
saw the logs as more than mere diversion. In his patent,
he referred to them as quote education toys, calculated to
develop a child's constructive inclinations. Wright dubbed his invention Lincoln Logs,
but the origin of that name isn't as clear cut

(01:28):
as you might expect. The simplest explanation is that it's
a nod to Abraham Lincoln, who was famously born in
a one room log cabin in Kentucky and was later
rumored to be an expert at building cabins. The toys
original packaging certainly supports that theory. It features an illustration
of a log cabin alongside a portrait of Abraham Lincoln.

(01:51):
There are some other possibilities, though some have suggested the
name was a play on the term linking logs, a
fitting description of the toy. Some biographers have also asserted
the name was actually a tribute to John Lloyd Wright's father,
renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The theory goes that Frank's
middle name was originally Lincoln, and he only changed it

(02:14):
to Lloyd after his parents got divorced. There's little evidence
to back up that story, though, so take that one
with a grain of salt. While Lincoln Logs were a
huge hit with the public, it's worth noting they weren't
the first construction toys on the market. Tinker toys and
erector sets had both debuted a few years earlier, and

(02:35):
other log based building toys had been available since at
least the eighteen sixties. Some historians think John Lloyd Wright
even played with one of those sets himself when he
was a child. Speaking of which, John Lloyd Wright was
born on December twelfth, eighteen nine two, in Oak Park, Illinois.
He was the second of six children born to Frank

(02:58):
and Catherine Wright. John and his siblings began their education
at home under the tutelage of their mother. His father
worked long days at an architectural firm in Chicago, but
he also put his skills to work at home by
designing a custom play room for his children. He even
stocked it with a selection of toys he had purposely chosen,

(03:19):
believing they'd be beneficial to his kid's development, and being
that he was an architect, you can be sure there
were plenty of different building blocks in the mix, and
probably a few logs as well. Although John was an
avid learner, college later proved to be an ill fit
for him. He dropped out after two years and began
traveling the West Coast with his older brother, doing odd

(03:42):
jobs to pay his way. In search of a new direction,
John took a job as a draftsman in San Diego,
drawing architectural details for Bungalow Designs. The experience confirmed his
interest in the field, so he followed in his father's
footsteps by joining an architectural firm in Los ange Gelius.
A few years later, he returned to Chicago and began

(04:04):
working side by side with his dad as an assistant.
Along the way, John read every design book his father suggested,
and even worked with a private tutor to learn engineering.
He also married his girlfriend from Los Angeles, Jeanette Winters,
and designed a home for them in Chicago, which they
called the Bird Center. Apparently they were both big fans

(04:26):
of birds and had quite a few wooden ones scattered
throughout the house. In nineteen sixteen, at the age of
twenty four, John Lloyd Wright took on one of the
most important assignments of his life. His father had been
commissioned to build a second Imperial hotel in Tokyo, and
John sailed with him to Japan to serve as his

(04:48):
chief assistant on the project. Over the next sixteen months,
the Rights worked on the design together with John creating
working drawings and a plaster model of the hotel. The
biggest challenge of the design was making sure the structure
could withstand the powerful earthquakes that periodically strike Japan. Frank
Lloyd Wright came up with a clever idea to make

(05:10):
the hotel as earthquake proof as possible. He decided the
base of the building should be a system of interlocking
wooden beams that allowed the hotel to sway from side
to side during a quake instead of just collapsing. The
system was eventually put to the test during the Great
Canto earthquake of ninety three, just a few months after

(05:32):
the Imperial Hotel open for business. Sure Enough, Wright's design
proved a smart one. While most of Tokyo was devastated
by the seven point nine magnitude earthquake, the Imperial Hotel
was one of the few buildings left standing, albeit somewhat damaged.
It was during the initial planning of the hotel that

(05:53):
John Lloyd Wright first hit upon the idea of Lincoln logs.
He was impressed with the structural stability his father was
able to achieve with something as simple as interlocking logs,
so he began to think of ways to translate that
design to a smaller scale. Meanwhile, the rights working relationship
became rather strained. This eventually led Frank to kick his

(06:17):
son off the project, at which point John returned to
the US and began experimenting with making wooden toys. At first,
he called his operation the Red Square Toy Company, named
after a symbol his father often used in his architectural designs. However,
once he was issued the patent for Lincoln Logs in
n he changed the company name to J. L. Right Manufacturing.

(06:42):
The first set released by the company included instructions on
how to build both Abraham Lincoln's boyhood cabin as well
as Uncle Tom's cabin from the book of the same name.
Lincoln Logs were an instant success for a number of reasons. First,
the simplicity of the toys rock accord with the American public,
as it was released during a time of increased urbanization,

(07:05):
when more and more people were abandoning rural homesteads in
favor of modern city living. In that way, Lincoln Logs
were a throwback to a simpler, and some would say,
more wholesome way of life. There was also a renewed
sense of American patriotism following the end of World War One,
so a product that evoked Abraham Lincoln was an easy sell.

(07:29):
John Lloyd Wright was well aware of his good timing.
The first slogan he used to market and sell the
building kits was interesting playthings typifying the spirit of America. Lastly,
Lincoln Logs were one of the first toys to be
marketed to both boys and girls alike, effectively doubling the

(07:49):
toys market. John Lloyd Wright tried to keep the momentum
going by releasing a new kind of construction set in
the nineteen thirties. That product, on his Right Blocks, consisted
of interlocking wooden shapes that allowed kids to build more
intricate designs and structures than they could with Lincoln Logs.
Despite this advantage, Right Blocks never caught on with kids

(08:13):
and were quietly discontinued a few years later. However, Lincoln
Logs continued to sell well, especially at Chicago's Marshall Field
Department stores. John supplemented his company's offerings with other wooden toys,
including carved animals, chess pieces, and jigsaw puzzles, many of
which featured his favorite birds. In nineteen forty three, John

(08:37):
decided playtime was over and decided to get out of
the toy business. He sold the patent for Lincoln Logs
to Play School for the bargain basement price of just
eight hundred dollars. After that, he went back to practicing
architecture full time and later moved to Delmar, California with
his family. He died there on December twentieth, nineteen seventy two,

(09:00):
at the age of eighty. As for Lincoln Logs, they
remained a fixture of the playroom for decades to come,
and are still being manufactured and played with today. There
are a few differences with the product though. While the
original logs were carved from redwood, they later switched to
stained pine. There was even a brief period in the

(09:20):
nineteen seventies when the logs were made from plastic, but
the less said about that, the better. The product has
also changed hands a few times over the years, but
as of two hasbro owns the rights to the toy,
which it licenses to a company called Basic Fun Inc.
In addition to the traditional full size sets of Lincoln Logs,

(09:41):
there's now a miniature World's Smallest version, so you can
build a teeny tiny log cabin in the palm of
your hand. To date, more than a hundred million sets
of Lincoln Logs have been sold worldwide. That's a sure
sign of the toys enduring popularity, but it's not the
only one. In nineteen ninety nine, John Lloyd Wright and

(10:03):
his invention of Lincoln logs were enshrined in the National
Toy Hall of Fame, taking their rightful place alongside other
playtime classics such as the Teddy Bear, the Baby Doll,
and the Hula Hoop Oh. If only his father could
see him Ned, I'm Gay Blusier and hopefully you now

(10:24):
know a little more about history today than you did yesterday.
You can learn even more about history by following us
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C Show, and if you have any comments or suggestions,
you can always send them my way at this Day
at I heart media dot com. Thanks to Chandler May's

(10:46):
for producing the show, and thank you for listening. I'll
see you back here again tomorrow for another day in
History Class