Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frye,
Speaker 1: and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Tracy Milton Bradley has been
Speaker 1: on my list for a little minute. I think that
Speaker 1: came up when we were talking about wig aboards. Maybe
Speaker 1: maybe I haven't revisited that that Outlinington to refresh, but
Speaker 1: he comes up periodic. He's just bumped up against a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff that I have been looking at lately,
Speaker 1: and most recently, when I was looking at inventors, his
Speaker 1: name kept popping up, even though he wasn't directly related
Speaker 1: to anything that we've talked about. And I like him
Speaker 1: because he's a good one that does not spoiler alert
Speaker 1: appear to have been a monster, which is always a refresher,
Speaker 1: although he certainly could get obsessed with things that other
Speaker 1: people didn't agree with. But he did contribute to a
Speaker 1: lot of fun, although he believed in very moral fun,
Speaker 1: which kind of tickles me a little bit. So I
Speaker 1: don't think it's an overreach to say that he has
Speaker 1: shaped not only the way people in the US and
Speaker 1: around the globe play, but also in surprising ways if
Speaker 1: you don't know his life story, he also shaped how
Speaker 1: a lot of us have been educated in our youngest years.
Speaker 1: And so I think that merits a little chat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: seems like a good reason to me. Milton Bradley was
Speaker 1: born November eighth, eighteen thirty six, in Vienna, Maine. The
Speaker 1: Bradleys were really not well off. Lewis Bradley, Milton's father
Speaker 1: was a craftsman. His mother was Fanny Leiford Bradley. Milton
Speaker 1: was their only child. Lewis worked in a lot of
Speaker 1: different jobs as a farm hand, in carpentry, handyman work,
Speaker 1: odd jobs of just about any kind. In the mid
Speaker 1: eighteen forties, he learned how to make starch from potatoes
Speaker 1: and started a company to sell this starch. But then
Speaker 1: there was a potato blight which ruined that plan and
Speaker 1: left the Bradley family with almost nothing. Really, all their
Speaker 1: savings had been invested in equipment for the potato processing.
Speaker 1: A lack of income led to a change of locations,
Speaker 1: so when Milton was eleven, the family moved to Luwell, Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: where there was mill work. Yes, in an odd bit
Speaker 1: of happenstance, this is yet another episode where a cotton
Speaker 1: mill is featured because that is where his father worked.
Speaker 1: Milton went to Lowell School, his primary school and his
Speaker 1: high school, and he was particularly good at math and
Speaker 1: science as a student, but he was also very interested
Speaker 1: in and fairly skilled at art, specifically drawing, with no
Speaker 1: real outlet for that through the school system, So after
Speaker 1: he graduated, he got work in a draftsman's office, you know,
Speaker 1: as a very low level office boy essentially, and then
Speaker 1: he also sold stationery to residents of boarding houses as
Speaker 1: a side job so that he could save up some money.
Speaker 1: And the reason he was trying to sock away money
Speaker 1: is because because he wanted tuition funds because in eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty four he enrolled at Lawrence Scientific School. That school
Speaker 1: in Cambridge, Massachusetts, eventually became part of Harvard. Bradley lived
Speaker 1: at home while he was going to school so he
Speaker 1: could stretch his savings. Was just a few hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: That meant his commute was just under thirty miles each
Speaker 1: way to and from school. This would have been a
Speaker 1: pretty arduous schedule of long days for any commuter. It
Speaker 1: was really the only way that this was going to work, though.
Speaker 1: Following work where Lewis Bradley could find it. Milton's parents
Speaker 1: made another move, this time to Hartford, Connecticut, and that
Speaker 1: was two years into his college education, and this caused
Speaker 1: a little problem because Milton could not afford to move
Speaker 1: out on his own, so he had to move with
Speaker 1: his parents just six months shy of finishing his studies.
Speaker 1: But then at nineteen Milton decided he needed to earn
Speaker 1: a living and make his own way, and so he
Speaker 1: moved not far away from there to Springfield, Massachusetts, and
Speaker 1: that is where he got his first job. The way
Speaker 1: he got that job sounds a little unbelievable. You really
Speaker 1: could not do this today. He marched into the offices
Speaker 1: of the Wasson Locomotive car Works in Springfield and asked
Speaker 1: if they had a draftsman. The person he spoke to
Speaker 1: said that they did not, and Bradley offered himself as
Speaker 1: one and was hired on the spot at the rate
Speaker 1: of a dollar and twenty five cents a day. According
Speaker 1: to his diary recollection of the event, Bradley had been
Speaker 1: clear when he was asked he didn't have any practical
Speaker 1: experience in this, and when he was questioned as to
Speaker 1: whether he could draw a locomotive He said, I never have,
Speaker 1: but I think I could. I feel like just show
Speaker 1: up someplace and ask for a job. As like bad
Speaker 1: job advice from yeah, I mean it's ongoing bad job advice,
Speaker 1: but like also having no experience whatsoever is it makes
Speaker 1: it a whole other level. Bradley left the office and
Speaker 1: found himself a room at a house, and it probably
Speaker 1: seemed like the start of great things for him. But
Speaker 1: Wasson had financial problems and just a year into Bradley's
Speaker 1: time there, this firm closed. I mean, to his credit,
Speaker 1: he was right, he could. He actually turned out to
Speaker 1: be a pretty good draftsman, and he had some experience
Speaker 1: in an office, just not drawing trains. Bradley was, ever
Speaker 1: trying to find ways to generate income. In eighteen fifty eight,
Speaker 1: after the closing of the Locomotive car Works, he started
Speaker 1: running ads in a variety of papers in the Massachusetts
Speaker 1: area that read Bradley's Mechanical and Mathematical Institute. The subscriber,
Speaker 1: formerly draftsman for the Springfield Locomotive Works, is now prepared
Speaker 1: to give practical instruction in mechanical drawing in all its
Speaker 1: branches viz. Detail working drawings, in plans, elevations and sections,
Speaker 1: line and brushshading, coloring, geometrical projection, linear perspective, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Drawing instruments furnished at importers prices, Particular attention
Speaker 1: given to working drawings of new machinery, also to patent
Speaker 1: office drawings and specifications. During this early phase of being
Speaker 1: in business for himself, Milton met a young woman named
Speaker 1: by LOONA Eaton and they started a courtship, but Milton
Speaker 1: knew he could not marry her unless he had money
Speaker 1: coming in, and he was really not drumming up any
Speaker 1: business at all at first, But then wast And Locomotive
Speaker 1: had a commission to start production of train cars again
Speaker 1: in eighteen fifty eight from a surprising client, which was Egypt.
Speaker 1: The Alexandria and Cairo Railroad needed cars and the plant
Speaker 1: was back up and running. Milton was contracted by Wasson
Speaker 1: to draft drawings of the cars to be shipped along
Speaker 1: with the cars themselves, so the workers who unpacked them
Speaker 1: understood exactly how everything worked and should look. Bradley made
Speaker 1: a nice sum of money from this commission, and he
Speaker 1: planned to use it by purchasing equipment for his new company.
Speaker 1: He also bought a desk for his mother and a
Speaker 1: ring for Filona. As part of this. Bradley had developed
Speaker 1: an interest in lithographs because they had sent him a
Speaker 1: lithograph of one of his drawings of the train car,
Speaker 1: and he started to realize this was a potential business enterprise.
Speaker 1: There were not many lithograph presses around at this time.
Speaker 1: The closest one to Springfield was in Boston that was
Speaker 1: about ninety miles away. So Bradley thought that if he
Speaker 1: could offer lithograph printing, he'd be the only one for
Speaker 1: quite a distance and he might be able to carve
Speaker 1: out kind of a niche industry for himself. And when
Speaker 1: he reached out to an old friend from Lowell who
Speaker 1: was named George Tapley, who will come up a lot
Speaker 1: in his life story about buying a lithograph press from
Speaker 1: the firm that Tapley worked at in Providence, Rhode Island,
Speaker 1: Milton Bradley was invited to come and see one. He did,
Speaker 1: and he bought it, and over the course of a
Speaker 1: two week stay he learned how it worked. He brought
Speaker 1: that press back to Field and set up his shop
Speaker 1: as a lithographer and publisher, taking down the previous sign
Speaker 1: that touted his services as a mechanical draftsman and patent solicitor.
Speaker 1: And his first commission was working on a design showcase
Speaker 1: book for a monument maker, and then soon he stayed
Speaker 1: pretty constantly busy with orders. More bad fortune was on
Speaker 1: the way for Bradley, though, as the United States was
Speaker 1: embroiled in the growing conflict that would eventually become the
Speaker 1: Civil War, he did not have any clients lining up
Speaker 1: for the use of his printing services. But as the
Speaker 1: press sat unused, Milton Bradley brainstormed other ways to try
Speaker 1: to bring in money, and he finally came up with
Speaker 1: something that would make him a household name. So that
Speaker 1: big turning moment in Milton Bradley's business life came when
Speaker 1: he produced a board game called The Checkered Game of Life.
Speaker 1: This game debuted in eighteen sixty, but it is unclear
Speaker 1: where the idea for it came from. So there's a
Speaker 1: book called The Milton Bradley Story, which is a print
Speaker 1: version of a nineteen seventy three lecture given by James J.
Speaker 1: Shay Junior, who was president of the Milton Bradley Company
Speaker 1: at the time, and in that lecture he describes this
Speaker 1: moment this way quote, Milton Bradley's press stood idle and
Speaker 1: bankruptcy threatened. It was during this period that an inventor
Speaker 1: came to him with a game called the Checkered Game
Speaker 1: of Life. Mister Bradley seized upon this opportunity and produced
Speaker 1: and sold forty five thousand copies of the game the
Speaker 1: first year. So that raised my eyebrow, because who is
Speaker 1: this inventor who seems to have been cut out of
Speaker 1: this whole thing. But it also seems like this account
Speaker 1: might have been based on a misunderstanding of the actual events.
Speaker 1: In a version written by James J. Shay Senior thirteen
Speaker 1: years before his son's speech, he stated that Milton's old
Speaker 1: friend George Tapley, had visited Bradley when the young entrepreneur
Speaker 1: was feeling dejected and stressed about money, and Tapley, who
Speaker 1: had his own problem but was overall and optimist, suggested
Speaker 1: that they play a game. And according to the older account,
Speaker 1: this evening of play of an unnamed but old English
Speaker 1: board game inspired Milton Bradley to invent a game that
Speaker 1: he could print himself on his lithograph press. Tapley, like Bradley,
Speaker 1: was out of work. But it's possible that because he
Speaker 1: had been an associate of Bradley's and had some business
Speaker 1: connections with him, this may have just been a case
Speaker 1: of sort of misspoken details. Yeah, how Tapley maybe got
Speaker 1: characterized as another inventor in that seventy three speech may
Speaker 1: have been because of that. But it does appear that
Speaker 1: Milton Bradley did not steal this idea from anyone. Coming up,
Speaker 1: we are going to talk about how that inspiration, though
Speaker 1: wherever it came from, led to Milton Bradley very carefully
Speaker 1: and thoughtfully crafting his first game. But first we're going
Speaker 1: to hear from the sponsors that support the show. Milton
Speaker 1: Bradley worked really hard to design this first game, and
Speaker 1: he play tested it with his friend George Tapley, and
Speaker 1: then he worked very hard to actually produce it because
Speaker 1: in addition to the printing that needed to be done
Speaker 1: to produce the board, there was also the need to
Speaker 1: package it in a way that made sense and made
Speaker 1: it attractive to prospective buyers. This was, of course, well
Speaker 1: before machinery that automated the cutting, labeling, or packing of
Speaker 1: game boxes, and what packaging machinery there was would have
Speaker 1: been way out of Milton Bradley's access. Those were all
Speaker 1: things that Bradley had to do by hand, initially with
Speaker 1: one assistant to help him. And after they had assembled
Speaker 1: several hundred units of the game, which apparently took many
Speaker 1: six day a week work weeks that were twelve plus
Speaker 1: hours a day, Bradley packed all of these up and
Speaker 1: went with them to New York, planning to go store
Speaker 1: to store on cold calls, just seeing if anyone wanted
Speaker 1: to stock this new game that he had gone. He
Speaker 1: asked for fifty cents per unit, but he wrote in
Speaker 1: his diary that he honestly didn't have any idea what
Speaker 1: retailers might charge for them. It was kind of like,
Speaker 1: I don't know what my invention's worth, but here's where
Speaker 1: I priced it, knowing a number of people who are
Speaker 1: board game developers and how much time it often takes
Speaker 1: to just like mock up one prototype of their game,
Speaker 1: not even with a box to ship it in or
Speaker 1: any of that laborious. Yes, in two days, Milton was
Speaker 1: out of stock. Stores had been pretty enthusiastic about stocking
Speaker 1: a game that seemed like a fun way to play
Speaker 1: act through life and teach kids morality along the way,
Speaker 1: Because that was the intention of Bradley's design. The game
Speaker 1: manual instructions expounded on its inherent morality quote. This game represents,
Speaker 1: as indicated by the name, the Checkered Journey of Life,
Speaker 1: and is intended to present the various vices and virtues
Speaker 1: in their natural relation to each other, the whole being
Speaker 1: embodied in an attractive and entertaining amusement well calculated to
Speaker 1: interest youth or adults. Each player, represented by his counter
Speaker 1: or man, starts in the cradle or infancy and endeavors
Speaker 1: to reach happy old age by the best course he
Speaker 1: can select, striving not gain on his journey that which
Speaker 1: shall make him the most prosperous, and to shun that
Speaker 1: which will retard him in his progress. The journey of
Speaker 1: life is governed by a combination of chance and judgment,
Speaker 1: the chance representing the circumstance in life over which we
Speaker 1: apparently have no control, but which are nevertheless governed to
Speaker 1: a great extent by the voluntary actions of our past lives.
Speaker 1: So in the game, the player oftentimes has choice of
Speaker 1: a number of moves which he can make to more
Speaker 1: or less apparent advantage, and at other times circumstances compel
Speaker 1: him to pursue a course greatly to his disadvantage. But
Speaker 1: any such necessity can generally be traced to some a
Speaker 1: false move made in the former part of the game,
Speaker 1: the effects of which could not be foreseen. You have
Speaker 1: to live your life right or you will lose. You
Speaker 1: brought this on yourself, Holly. The success of Bradley's first
Speaker 1: trip to New York gave him the confidence to finally
Speaker 1: set a date and get married to his fiancee, and
Speaker 1: he and Viilona were wed on November eighth, eighteen sixty.
Speaker 1: That was the same day that Milton turned twenty four,
Speaker 1: so he was still a very young man as he
Speaker 1: was doing all of this. All of this happened alongside
Speaker 1: another event from Bradley's life that seems like it would
Speaker 1: lead to wealth, but then hit a stumbling block. His
Speaker 1: next business venture with the press was making mass market
Speaker 1: prints of a photograph of then Republican presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln.
Speaker 1: This probably seemed like a sure fire away to make
Speaker 1: money Bradley, he seemed to think, so he printed several
Speaker 1: hundred thousand of the photos, and they probably would have
Speaker 1: been lucrative were it not for just a bad bit
Speaker 1: of luck. In the time between sitting for the photo
Speaker 1: that Milton Bradley used as the basis for the Prince
Speaker 1: and the time that the election was over, Lincoln's appearance changed.
Speaker 1: This is a little bit of a side story, but
Speaker 1: I wanted to do included because I found it so charming.
Speaker 1: The decision on Lincoln's part to grow a beard came,
Speaker 1: it seems, from an exchange that he had with a
Speaker 1: girl named Grace Bedell, who was an eleven year old
Speaker 1: from New York. Grace wrote the candidate Lincoln a letter
Speaker 1: in which she said, quote, I have got four brothers,
Speaker 1: and a part of them will vote for you anyway,
Speaker 1: and if you will let your whiskers grow, I will
Speaker 1: try and get the rest of them to vote for
Speaker 1: you. You would look a great deal better, for your face
Speaker 1: is so thin. All the ladies like whiskers, and they
Speaker 1: would tease their husbands to vote for you, and then
Speaker 1: you would be president. This is like so political logic.
Speaker 1: Although the return letter that Lincoln wrote to Grace pondered
Speaker 1: whether people might think his having a beard after he
Speaker 1: did not would be a silly affectation, he did grow
Speaker 1: one in the months that followed. And then Lincoln met
Speaker 1: Grace Biddell in early eighteen sixty one when he was
Speaker 1: in New York, and he allegedly told her that he
Speaker 1: had grown his whiskers just for her. Just probably not true,
Speaker 1: but it is. He did tell her that it is
Speaker 1: probably not the reason he did it, but it is
Speaker 1: a very sweet story. Yeah. Yeah, I like the part
Speaker 1: of having an incredibly contentious and impactful election boiled down
Speaker 1: to whether he had a beard. Yeah, grow your whiskers. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Once the president was headed to his inauguration, he was
Speaker 1: no longer the clean shaven man in Bradley's souvenir photos
Speaker 1: Bradley's remaining prince were worthless. Lincoln looked so different with
Speaker 1: a beard than he did clean shaven that nobody wanted
Speaker 1: to buy these. He wound up destroying the stock. There
Speaker 1: are you can find pictures of that original print, and
Speaker 1: it is I mean, I think most of us at
Speaker 1: this point have probably seen pictures of Abraham Lincoln with
Speaker 1: and without beard, and he does look so very different.
Speaker 1: I could see why at the time you will be like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, is that him? I also, I am
Speaker 1: not a person who would buy a picture of the president. No,
Speaker 1: me either, but you know, they didn't have streaming services.
Speaker 1: Then they had to do whatever kept their lives entertained.
Speaker 1: So Bradley had sort of put the checkered Game of
Speaker 1: Life aside while he focused on this souvenir Lincoln portrait project.
Speaker 1: He did get occasional orders for his board game, but
Speaker 1: though they had initially been very, very exuberantly received, it
Speaker 1: kind of slowed to a trickle, and then about the
Speaker 1: time he was feeling really anxious about money and his
Speaker 1: tanked photoplan and his lack of continued interest in his game,
Speaker 1: the gaming business started to actually pick up. But then
Speaker 1: the Civil War began and Bradley thought it was just
Speaker 1: not the time for fun amusements. It kind of seemed
Speaker 1: in bad taste for him to be marketing a game,
Speaker 1: and early on in the conflict, he was also asked
Speaker 1: by the superintendent of the Union Army armory to work
Speaker 1: once again as a draftsman, drawing up plans for a
Speaker 1: new rifle, and Bradley also wanted to enlist with the Union,
Speaker 1: but he was told that his skills as a draftsman
Speaker 1: were too valuable. The line that comes up in the
Speaker 1: biographies of him, is this superintendent saying a lot of
Speaker 1: men can shoot a gun and go to war, but
Speaker 1: they can't all draw. When Milton saw a battalion of
Speaker 1: soldiers camped in Springfield, he was, per his account, struck
Speaker 1: by the vacant looks on their faces as they stood
Speaker 1: or sat around campfires. He worried that their downtime had
Speaker 1: nothing to fill it, so they were stuck in a
Speaker 1: cycle of active conflict, training for conflict, or dread of conflict.
Speaker 1: And he got the idea that maybe his game invention
Speaker 1: would actually help the war effort. So in the hours
Speaker 1: he wasn't working on drawings for the armory, he started
Speaker 1: designing compact game kits. He knew they had to be
Speaker 1: small and light. They could not weigh down or hinder
Speaker 1: a soldier in any way. He started handing out the
Speaker 1: game kits once they were finished, and they included pasteboard
Speaker 1: versions of Chess, Checkers, backgammon, several different dominoes games, and
Speaker 1: the Checkered Game of Life. And then he also started
Speaker 1: to offer these compact game kits for sale. They were
Speaker 1: one dollar per kit. He wasn't selling them to soldiers,
Speaker 1: he would sell them to stores and they could resell them,
Speaker 1: or they could donate them to the army. And charity
Speaker 1: organizations also started buying them in bulk to give out
Speaker 1: to soldiers, and soon they'll order rate really skyrocketed, and
Speaker 1: this had the interesting secondary effect of also kickstarting a
Speaker 1: new level of interest in the original Checkered Game of Life.
Speaker 1: People felt good supporting a company that they saw as
Speaker 1: helping the union, and they started to buy the full
Speaker 1: size version of the game to play at home. This
Speaker 1: was also a way that they knew that the members
Speaker 1: of their family who were engaged in combat were playing
Speaker 1: the same game they were playing. It fostered this sense
Speaker 1: of connectedness. So Milton Bradley had figured out how to
Speaker 1: reconcile his concerns over making amusements during wartime with the
Speaker 1: recognition of people actually needing such things just at those times,
Speaker 1: and he had also managed to ensure the help of
Speaker 1: his business in the process. So it was a little
Speaker 1: bit early in the structure of the episode, but in
Speaker 1: the interest of keeping this last part of it all together,
Speaker 1: we are going to talk more about the Checkered Game
Speaker 1: of Life and its legacy after we pause for a
Speaker 1: sponsor break. So we promised we would talk about the
Speaker 1: Checkered Game of Life because we haven't described it in
Speaker 1: great detail yet. And the board for the Checkered Game
Speaker 1: of Life is surprise. It looks like a checkerboard sort of,
Speaker 1: but the boxes have things printed on them. So players
Speaker 1: start at one corner of the board it's the lower
Speaker 1: left if you're looking at the board with the printing
Speaker 1: oriented correctly for reading, and then they work their way
Speaker 1: to the top right corner. Obviously, of multiple people are
Speaker 1: playing around aboard, they're not only going to have that
Speaker 1: same perspective this game. If you've ever played the Game
Speaker 1: of Life as it exists today, this is far darker
Speaker 1: than it's modern reimagining, which is just called the Game
Speaker 1: of Life. In the eighteen sixty version, you could land
Speaker 1: on squares that were extremely dire sounding, including one that
Speaker 1: read suicide that would end the game for you. Most
Speaker 1: of the places you could land required some sort of
Speaker 1: moral decision, so you could get points from virtuous squares,
Speaker 1: and if you rack up enough points, you win, whether
Speaker 1: or not you reach the end objective of a happy
Speaker 1: old age or not. It's not one where you get
Speaker 1: cash or anything. You only get points, and it's also
Speaker 1: interestingly enough to me almost impossible to win if you're
Speaker 1: playing this and you choose the path of politics. And
Speaker 1: it seems in some ways like Milton Bradley's own life
Speaker 1: experience and often shifting fortunes, informed some of the ways
Speaker 1: things could play out in this game. As explained in
Speaker 1: the rules quote, it will be seen that poverty lies
Speaker 1: near the cradle. Now, in starting life, it is not
Speaker 1: necessarily a fact that poverty will be a disadvantage, so
Speaker 1: in the game it causes the player no loss to
Speaker 1: pass through poverty. But if in more advanced age he
Speaker 1: falls into intemperance and so thus carried to poverty, it
Speaker 1: is only by constant and renewed exertion that the lost
Speaker 1: ground can be regained. The same of disgrace, a person
Speaker 1: may in early life be in disgrace for a time
Speaker 1: through no fault of his own. But if, after having
Speaker 1: had the advantages of experience, he falls through idleness to disgrace,
Speaker 1: he will certainly need the helping hand of influence to
Speaker 1: give him a fat office in order to start him
Speaker 1: again in the world. This way, many ideas are suggested
Speaker 1: by the peculiar arrangement of the several squares. Milton Bradley,
Speaker 1: of course, patented the Checkered Game of Life, stating in
Speaker 1: his patent application quote, be it known that I, Milton Bradley,
Speaker 1: of Springfield, in the County of Hampton and the Commonwealth
Speaker 1: of Massachusetts, have invented a new social game. And he
Speaker 1: goes on to describe the game's workings. The player having
Speaker 1: the first move twirls the teetotem, and the number remaining
Speaker 1: uppermost when the teetotem stops indicates what his move shall
Speaker 1: be according to the description of moves on the record dials.
Speaker 1: He accordingly enters his counter at infancy and from there
Speaker 1: makes his first move Immediately. This leaves the square called
Speaker 1: infancy vacant for the next player to the left, who
Speaker 1: now twirls the teetotem and entering at infancy, makes the
Speaker 1: move designated. Thus, each player in turn twirls the teetotem
Speaker 1: and moves accordingly. When a counter moved to a square
Speaker 1: having a hand on it, directions will be found on
Speaker 1: that square, carrying it to another, the position of which
Speaker 1: on the board is indicated by the index or hand
Speaker 1: pointing to it. Thus, a counter can never stop on
Speaker 1: a square having a hand on it. The account of
Speaker 1: the game is very conveniently kept on the record dial
Speaker 1: by the rotary brass pointer. Thus, when a player moves
Speaker 1: onto a square containing five, turn the pointer to five,
Speaker 1: and if onto another containing ten, to fifteen, and so on.
Speaker 1: Any player who reaches happy old age gains fifty, which
Speaker 1: is added to his amount. But as the winner must
Speaker 1: gain one hundred, the game is not concluded until someone
Speaker 1: has obtained that amount. As happy old age is surrounded
Speaker 1: by many difficulties, fifty may oftentimes be gained as soon
Speaker 1: by a succession of smaller numbers as by striving for
Speaker 1: happy old age. And again he summed up with that
Speaker 1: line that we mentioned earlier, which I love enough that
Speaker 1: I thought it bears repeating. The journey of life is
Speaker 1: governed by a combination of chance and judgment. But though
Speaker 1: he didn't credit anyone else in the patents, the game
Speaker 1: wasn't entirely original. It might be better to say it
Speaker 1: was a new version of a game type that had
Speaker 1: been around for hundreds of years. Spiral race games, that's
Speaker 1: games in which players progress along a spiral path on
Speaker 1: a board as they race to complete the goal, have
Speaker 1: been around for a really long time. According to a
Speaker 1: New Yorker article by Jill Lapour written in two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven, the oldest spiral game might be an Arabic
Speaker 1: one called the Hyena game. In it, pebbles represent the
Speaker 1: player's mothers, and they have to follow a spiral track
Speaker 1: to a central point where a task is completed, and
Speaker 1: then return home before they become victims of a hyaena.
Speaker 1: That sounds kind of like a fun game. That one
Speaker 1: it sounds like, is like not obviously, it is old
Speaker 1: enough that it is not necessarily on a printed game board,
Speaker 1: but it's one where you can draw a by roll
Speaker 1: in the sand and then use that as your game board.
Speaker 1: In seventeen ninety a board game appeared in London shops
Speaker 1: that was called The New Game of Human Life, and
Speaker 1: this was a map board that advanced players from being
Speaker 1: an infant to status as immortal by taking them a
Speaker 1: long life's journey with possible pitfalls of temptation and options
Speaker 1: to choose virtuous acts. So that sounds quite familiar. In
Speaker 1: less than a decade, the New Game of Human Life
Speaker 1: had spread to North America and it was suggested to
Speaker 1: parents on both sides of the Atlantic as a good
Speaker 1: way to teach children about morality, and this was followed
Speaker 1: by other similar English games, the Mansion of Bliss and
Speaker 1: The Mansion of Happiness being two primary ones. Both of
Speaker 1: those games end with a winner getting into heaven. The
Speaker 1: Mansion of Happiness was pretty popular in the US in
Speaker 1: the first half and early middle of the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: so not long at all before Milton Bradley's version popped up.
Speaker 1: Whether or not he was familiar with these other specific
Speaker 1: games is unclear, but here's what I love if he
Speaker 1: did know about them. What's really interesting is the way
Speaker 1: that he shifted the theming of the game from their approach.
Speaker 1: So The Mansion of Happiness is very obviously a game
Speaker 1: about Christian morality. The goal is to secure a place
Speaker 1: in heaven through gameplay, but in Bradley's version, although the
Speaker 1: morality of it is very similar and it's very much
Speaker 1: about doing what's right, the theming is secular. If you
Speaker 1: live a good life you will get to happy old
Speaker 1: age instead of any kind of religious immortality goal. As
Speaker 1: Bradley had steered his company through the Civil War years,
Speaker 1: he'd also hired other people to run the lithograph press,
Speaker 1: so his time was freed up to work on other
Speaker 1: projects while the Checkered Game of Life kept a steady
Speaker 1: stream of revenue coming in. This resulted in a lot
Speaker 1: more games. One of his most popular was a croquet
Speaker 1: set that was small enough to be set up on
Speaker 1: a tabletop. This came out just as the US was
Speaker 1: embracing croquet, so unlike some of his earlier ventures, the
Speaker 1: timing was just right. Yeah, there are some people who
Speaker 1: credit him with popularizing croquet. I found ads for his
Speaker 1: croquet set as early as eighteen sixty six, and somewhere
Speaker 1: between eighteen sixty six and eighteen sixty eight is kind
Speaker 1: of designated as the time that the US got really
Speaker 1: excited about croquet, so certainly he may have been part
Speaker 1: of making it making it available to everyone. On a
Speaker 1: sadder note, in eighteen sixty six, Milton's wife, Violona, hosted
Speaker 1: a birthday party for her husband, and while that party
Speaker 1: was going on, he noticed that she was less energetic
Speaker 1: than usual, and she continued to have less of her
Speaker 1: usual spirit over the next couple of weeks, and Milton
Speaker 1: became concerned and had a doctor come to the house,
Speaker 1: and Violona was deemed just to need rest and you know,
Speaker 1: to drink tonics, and she took it very easy, but
Speaker 1: her symptoms got worse and she died on March thirteenth
Speaker 1: of eighteen sixty seven. They did not have kids, and
Speaker 1: Milton did not want to live alone, so he asked
Speaker 1: his parents to move in with him after Violuna's passing,
Speaker 1: which they did. His father actually started working with him
Speaker 1: at the company, and during this time he threw himself
Speaker 1: into work and developed a great number of things, including
Speaker 1: a zootrope. In August eighteen sixty eight, Milton met a
Speaker 1: young woman named Ellen Thayer, who went by Nelly through
Speaker 1: his friend George and George's wife Mary Elizabeth. In the
Speaker 1: year and a half since Bylona's death, Milton had seemed
Speaker 1: to avoid the company of women entirely, but when he
Speaker 1: met Nelly, they talked late into the night. He really
Speaker 1: adored her, and so did his parents, and they were
Speaker 1: engaged just a few months later. They married the following spring,
Speaker 1: on May twenty first, eighteen sixty nine. They had two daughters,
Speaker 1: Florence and Lillian Alice. In eighteen sixty nine, as the
Speaker 1: newlywed Bradley was several years into what had become a
Speaker 1: successful business, he went to a talk given by educator
Speaker 1: and transcendentalists Emily Palmer Peabody. And In this talk, Peabody,
Speaker 1: who today is known pri smarily as a person who
Speaker 1: opened the first English language kindergarten in the US, talked
Speaker 1: about early childhood education and the work of German education
Speaker 1: reformer Friedrich Froebel, and Milton Bradley was a very receptive
Speaker 1: listener to all of this, and he found the ideas
Speaker 1: advocated by Froebel and in turn Peabody for children to
Speaker 1: learn through activity and play just very inspiring. Two actions
Speaker 1: on Bradley's part came out of this experience. One, he
Speaker 1: offered to publish a book that outlined all these educational ideas. Two,
Speaker 1: he decided that his company would manufacture and provide as
Speaker 1: gifts educational materials that would supplement classrooms that used the
Speaker 1: educational concepts of play. This was a really important development
Speaker 1: in education in the United States because the idea of
Speaker 1: an early educational classroom filled with brightly colored toys was
Speaker 1: just not something that really existed. So working with educators,
Speaker 1: Milton Bradley helped usher in the populace of kindergarten. So
Speaker 1: it's an unpopular endeavor with a lot of Bradley's business partners.
Speaker 1: The company was not experiencing the same robust sales that
Speaker 1: it once had. Their margins were really thin. Their president
Speaker 1: was doing research and development on educational materials instead of
Speaker 1: new social games. In eighteen seventy eight, two of his
Speaker 1: partners left, and George Tapley bought out their interests. Bradley
Speaker 1: is said to have continued good relationships with everyone involved,
Speaker 1: even though they did not share his vision regarding the
Speaker 1: importance of early education. From eighteen sixty nine on, Bradley
Speaker 1: was focused almost exclusively on inventing and patenting educational tools.
Speaker 1: He made crayons and school grade watercolor sets and construction
Speaker 1: paper packets, so a lot of the things that many
Speaker 1: of us associate with the playful and artistic parts of
Speaker 1: our childhood classroom experiences were shaped in part by Milton
Speaker 1: Bradley's determination to give the kind movement solid footing. In
Speaker 1: the United States. He invented a kindergarten table in the
Speaker 1: eighteen eighties, and one of Milton Bradley's designers, Cornelius Hastings,
Speaker 1: was responsible for the invention of the one armed paper
Speaker 1: cutter that is so often used in classrooms and now
Speaker 1: in crafting in other places, but I have such memories
Speaker 1: of it in my elementary school classrooms. Those big, giant,
Speaker 1: heavy Oh I love those things. They're very satisfying, also
Speaker 1: a little scary sometimes. Yes, I don't know that they're
Speaker 1: great for kindergarteners, but they're certainly efficient at cutting big
Speaker 1: chunks of paper. One of the gift items that Bradley
Speaker 1: had made for Elizabeth Peabody's effort was a set of blocks.
Speaker 1: So normally these kinds of blocks would just be bright,
Speaker 1: solid colors to encourage imaginative play. But Milton had decided
Speaker 1: to put letters on the blocks, and this was something
Speaker 1: that Elizabeth Peabotty was apparently really angry about, and they
Speaker 1: were very good friends, but they got into quite a
Speaker 1: big fight about it because she thought that directing the
Speaker 1: kids too much. But Bradley made the blocks, so he
Speaker 1: got his way, and now we think of blocks with
Speaker 1: letters on them as very standard from an early age.
Speaker 1: And the thing was, as he was developing gifts for
Speaker 1: peabd he also started offering them at retail, and soon
Speaker 1: other companies were also trying to get into the market
Speaker 1: of learning toys and school supplies. To retain his standing
Speaker 1: in the school market, Bradley acquired The Kindergarten News in
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety three, and he started publishing it directly through
Speaker 1: the company. In nineteen oh seven, Milton Bradley, having run
Speaker 1: the Milton Bradley Company for forty seven years, retired. He
Speaker 1: let the younger executives take the reins. Milton Bradley died
Speaker 1: in May of nineteen eleven after a very brief and
Speaker 1: sudden illness. Yeah, it was one of those things. In
Speaker 1: one biography I read it sounded like he went for
Speaker 1: a car ride with his wife, they had a great time.
Speaker 1: The next day he didn't feel good, and something like
Speaker 1: forty eight hours later he had passed. It was very,
Speaker 1: very quick. In nineteen sixty, the Milton Bradley Company celebrated
Speaker 1: its one hundred year anniversary by developing a modernized version
Speaker 1: of the Checkered Game of Life. And this one is
Speaker 1: probably much more familiar to anyone listening. It is the
Speaker 1: Game of Life, and it shifted to use that spiral
Speaker 1: path method that we're all familiar with now. But unlike
Speaker 1: the eighteen sixty version, which focused so much on morality,
Speaker 1: the mid twentieth century life was about financial prosperity. The
Speaker 1: Milton Bradley Company was acquired by Hasbro in nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 1: Many Milton Bradley games continue to be produced, including classics
Speaker 1: like Candyland, Access and Allies, Battleship, Connect for Operation and Twister.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and seven, the Game of Life Twists
Speaker 1: and Turns was introduced, and that offered players a much
Speaker 1: more flexible approach to play. It was not so much
Speaker 1: about a goal but racking up points and money. In
Speaker 1: twenty ten, the Game of Life was inducted into the
Speaker 1: National Toy Hall of Fame. The Game of Life, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which we'll talk about on Friday, and I will make
Speaker 1: confessions that make me sound like a monster. Okay, So
Speaker 1: I have listener mail. This is one of those listener mails.
Speaker 1: This one has everything. Our listener Sheila, who writes, Hi,
Speaker 1: I discovered your podcast last year and I've been hooked
Speaker 1: ever since. I shared it with my husband and now
Speaker 1: Stuff you Missed in History Class is the only podcast
Speaker 1: my husband listens to. I am an artist and I
Speaker 1: absolutely love when your podcasts relate to art history. Don't
Speaker 1: be shy sharing that art. Sheila also makes a suggestion
Speaker 1: for a podcast topic which is somebody I would like
Speaker 1: to talk about, and also mentions that they're having a
Speaker 1: hard time figuring out how to search episodes. This is
Speaker 1: a problem we have run into for a long time.
Speaker 1: We used to have a more searchable situation. I think
Speaker 1: our usual advice if you do a search just online,
Speaker 1: not on any of our players, for stuff you missed
Speaker 1: in history class and a subject, you're more than likely
Speaker 1: to find it, versus trying to look through a player
Speaker 1: in search, which I always have trouble with. I would
Speaker 1: say even that is less. It's not as accurate as
Speaker 1: it used to be. Yeah, and that is I use
Speaker 1: Google as my search engine, and that is changes to
Speaker 1: the Google algorithm, not anything that's really within our control,
Speaker 1: I don't think. But yeah, some of the individual podcast apps,
Speaker 1: various ones are kind of searchable by episodes. Ours, the
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio app not really searchable by episode. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: kind of a it's a little bit tricky, so apologies.
Speaker 1: There's not a ton we can do about it, but
Speaker 1: we hear you and feel you. And then here's the
Speaker 1: important part. Photos. Yeah, she listened a lot of good photos.
Speaker 1: The two parakeets are Ren and Stimpy, which is endurable
Speaker 1: and also like appeals to my love of animation. We
Speaker 1: adopted them, Sheila says, from a bird rescue. And then
Speaker 1: another dog of my dreams. Here is our Akita, Emma
Speaker 1: with Santa. I love Akita's so desperately. I can't even
Speaker 1: if you don't know what an aikita is. It's a
Speaker 1: big Japanese, gorgeous, fluffy dog and I love them. Emma
Speaker 1: was adopted from a shelter last year, and she is,
Speaker 1: according to Sheila, a gentle giant and then finally the
Speaker 1: one who rules it all. Their torty Jazzy and Sheila,
Speaker 1: because she is an artist, also shared one of her
Speaker 1: watercolor and ink paintings. It is of a bird and
Speaker 1: it is beautiful. So this hits all of my stuff.
Speaker 1: We got dogs, we got birds, we got art. Sheila,
Speaker 1: thank you, what a delay. And that Akita is with Santa,
Speaker 1: who we also love, so thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: And this Torty has what I call torty face. No,
Speaker 1: she will sass you, I can tell. She will tell
Speaker 1: you how to do the dishes, how to dress, and
Speaker 1: how to touch her very specifically, and how much to
Speaker 1: feed her every day. Listen, I know I love it Toordy.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Shela. This was such a delightful
Speaker 1: email and so full of visual wonders that made me
Speaker 1: smile over and over and over. So I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Thank you for sharing your art with me. It's so beautiful.
Speaker 1: I love it. I love birds. So we're all good.
Speaker 1: If you would like to write to us and share
Speaker 1: a million pictures of things that will make us grin,
Speaker 1: or just to talk about something on the show, or
Speaker 1: pictures so maybe it won't make us grin but are important,
Speaker 1: you can do that at History podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1: You can also find us on social media as missed
Speaker 1: in History, and if you have not subscribed, you can
Speaker 1: do that on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you listen
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