page_title: Meccano
section_title: Applications of Meccano + Erector
hierarchical_section_title: Meccano / Applications of Meccano + Erector
caption_attribution_description: Meccano w:differential analyser in use in the Cambridge University Mathematics Laboratory. The person on the right is Dr Maurice Wilkes who was in charge of it at the time. The others are J. Corner (centre), operating the input table, and A.F. Devonshire (left).
context_page_description: Meccano is a model construction system created in 1898 by Frank Hornby in Liverpool, United Kingdom. The system consists of reusable metal strips, plates, angle girders, wheels, axles and gears, and plastic parts that are connected using nuts and bolts. It enables the building of working models and mechanical devices. Meccano maintains a manufacturing facility in Calais, France. In 2013, the Meccano brand was acquired by the Canadian toy company Spin Master.
  In 1913, a very similar construction set was introduced in the United States under the brand name Erector. In 2000, Meccano bought the Erector brand and unified its presence on all continents.
context_section_description: With a Meccano set there was a wide range of models that could be built. Here are the models for which instructions were given in the largest set of the late 1950s, the "Outfit 10":
  "Railway Service Crane", "Sports Motor Car", "Coal Tipper", "Cargo Ship", "Double Decker Bus", "Lifting Shovel", "Blocksetting Crane", "Beam Bridge", "Dumper Truck", "Automatic Gantry Crane", "Automatic Snow Loader", "4-4-0 Passenger Locomotive"
  On top of these there were instruction leaflets available for:
  "Combine Harvester", "The Eiffel Tower", "Showman’s Traction Engine", "Twin-Cylinder Motor Cycle Engine", "Trench Digger", "Bottom Dump Truck", "Road Surfacing Machine", "Mechanical Loading Shovel"
  It has been said that the instructions sometimes contained deliberate errors to challenge the ingenuity of its users. However, those  involved in their production maintain such errors were accidental, and are no more common than the unintentional errors in other modelling plans.
  Since this time, enthusiasts such as G. Maurice Morris and MW Models have taken to publishing their own model plans, ranging from small models up to large and complex machines.
  In 1934, Meccano began to be used in the construction of differential analysers, a type of analogue computer used to solve differential equations which has long since become obsolete. Though invented on paper in the 19th century, the first such machine had only been built in 1931, and normally they would be built by specialist manufacturers, at great cost. For example, in 1947, UCLA in the US installed a differential analyser built for them by General Electric at a cost of $125,000. However, a "proof of concept" model of a differential analyser which made extensive use of Meccano parts was built at Manchester University, UK, in 1934, by Douglas Hartree and Arthur Porter: use of Meccano meant that the machine was cheap to build, and it proved "accurate enough for the solution of many scientific problems". This machine is now in the Science Museum, Exhibition Road, London, England. A similar machine built by J.B. Bratt at Cambridge University in 1935 is now in the Museum of Transport and Technology (MOTAT) collection in Auckland, New Zealand. A memorandum written for the British military's Armament Research Department in 1944 describes how this same machine was modified during World War II for improved reliability and enhanced capability, and identifies its wartime applications as including research on the flow of heat, explosive detonations, and simulations of transmission lines. After a lengthy period of neglect, a restoration effort began in 2003, and a successful "full run through" of this machine was completed on 16 December 2008.
  In 1949, an Erector set was used to build the precursor to the modern artificial heart by William Sewell and William Glenn of the Yale School of Medicine. The external pump successfully bypassed the heart of a dog for more than an hour.
  In the 1970s, information theory pioneer Claude Shannon constructed a bounce-juggling machine from an Erector set.
  In the late 1980s, with an Erector Set, various old toys, and bits of jewelry, Dr. Kevorkian jury-rigged a machine he called the Thanatron (later renamed to the Mercitron.) Three bottles were suspended from a rickety beam, one filled with a saline solution to open a patient's veins, another with barbiturates for sedation, and a third with potassium chloride to stop the heart. After the Doctor connected the patient to an IV, he or she would pull a chain on the device to start the lethal medications flowing. He called it his "Rube Goldberg suicide device."  
  In 2005, Tim Robinson displayed his own Meccano differential analyser at the Computer History Museum, at Mountain View, California, US, and Robinson has also built and exhibited two models of Charles Babbage's difference engine, also using Meccano.
  In 1990 Meccano S.A. built a giant Ferris wheel in France. It was modelled after the original 1893 Ferris Wheel built by George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. at the World's Columbian Exposition at Chicago and was shipped to the U
caption: MOTAT's Meccano differential analyser in use at the Cambridge University Mathematics Laboratory, c. 1937. The person on the right is Dr. Maurice Wilkes, who was in charge of it at the time.
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