Richard Thompson James was an American naval engineer, best known for inventing the Slinky spring toy with his wife Betty James in Haverford Township, Pennsylvania, in 1943. Born in 1918, he graduated in mechanical engineering from Pennsylvania State University in 1939. While trying to develop a way to suspend sensitive shipboard instruments in rough seas he accidentally dropped a torsion spring, saw it keep moving, and founded the James Spring and Wire Company to mass produce the toy. The first production run sold out within 90 minutes at one dollar each in Philadelphia. He went to Bolivia in 1960 to join Wycliffe Bible Translators and died there in 1974.
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Source Slinky (Wikipedia)
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Richard Thompson James (March 27, 1918, July 13, 1974)
In Field: Mechanical Engineering, Introduction
Richard Thompson James (March 27, 1918, July 13, 1974) was an American naval engineer, best known for inventing the Slinky spring toy with his wife Betty James in Haverford Township, Pennsylvania in 1943.
In Group: Household and Consumer Product Inventors, Lead paragraph
best known for inventing the Slinky spring toy
View the SourceSlinky (Wikipedia)
Invented: Slinky, IntroductionQuote, Invented: Slinky, Introduction
The Slinky is a helical spring toy invented and developed by American naval engineer Richard T. James in 1943
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