I had something called "Vogue" which was almost but not quite like Meccano. This meant that most of the parts weren't quite compatible - for example the axles didn't go through the holes, and the nuts and bolts were different threads from Meccano ones.

John

Does he still use it,my wife groans when she sees the trays of parts emerging from the cupboard

Yes I lost mine when Ileft home for Mother gave it to nextdoor lads,I was very angry as I bought it out longtime saving a No 4 which cost around 15 shillings & added a 4A to make it No5 ,many years later I had a contact who offered me what roughly must be a 10 ,then later picked up special parts & some very early pieces & a horizontal steam engine & a geared clockwork motor unit my grandsons play with it on visits I built a sea oil rig & when parts were hard to get used electrical set screws my biggest regret was turn down a boxed set of Electric motors I have a number of old model instruction books & a few random mec magasines, Our technical dept used Meccano to build models of some new machinery. I played with a rich boy who had "O" gauge hornby train sets and special car & plane meccano`s & for one Christmas his Mother sent me a Hornby clockwork Goods set & dad bought me a Silver link set I made wooden rails to run long track but I didnt have enough pocket money to buy points , I have several boxed 00 Hornby engines & masses of track which my Grandson lays thro the bedrooms . But i never have time to build but kids have such multi choices these days I feel a times they really have lost out. jonha

I loved Meccano.....................Unfortunately it was my big brother's set, and he used to beat me up if I used it. I kept asking Father Christmas for my own set, but the old b***er kept giving me "girlie" things.
By the way, my big brother went on to be a quantity surveyor. I wonder if there is a connection between the toys we chose to play with, and our jobs later in life ?

Hmm interesting. After a couple of years as a commercial and industrial lighting designer I took a job repairing photocopiers so as to be near my girlfriend, and from those moved on to phototypesetters and small business computers.

John

One of my favourite stories about prototyping concerns the company that later became Darfen - the Darlington Fencing Company. My father-in-law was a patent expert, and the inventor turned up at his house one day with this idea that it might be possible to produce plastic diamond mesh fencing by extruding plastics through two sets of combs.

So on the living room table they set up a sloping board, and spent several happy hours extruding instant mashed potato through two combs, until the had the setting right for it to work. My father-in-law then wrote up the patent and submitted it.

It became one of the biggest selling fencing products in the country. Needless to say my father-in-law didn't get a penny from it.

John