Milton Bradley

Born in Vienna, Maine, in 1836, to Lewis and Fannie (née Lyford) Bradley, Milton Bradley grew up in a working-class and Christian household.{{cite thesis |url=https://honors.libraries.psu.edu/files/final_submissions/3726 |title=Milton Bradley's Game of Life: Constructing a National Narrative Through Board Game Analysis |first=Haleigh E. |last=Swansen |date=Fall 2016 |degree=BA |publisher=Pennsylvania State University |pages=6–7}}{{cite book |title=Who Was Milton Bradley? |first=Kirsten |last=Anderson |date=August 2, 2016 |publisher=Penguin Random House |author2=Who HQ |others=Illustrated by Tim Foley |isbn=9780448488479}} The family moved to Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1847. After completing high school in 1854, he found work as a draftsman and patent agent before enrolling at the Lawrence Scientific School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was unable to finish his studies after moving with his family to Hartford, Connecticut, where he could not find gainful employment. In 1856, Bradley moved to Springfield, Massachusetts, where he worked as a mechanical draftsman.

In 1859, Bradley went to Providence, Rhode Island, to learn lithography; and, in 1860, he set up the first color lithography shop in Springfield, Massachusetts. He moved forward with an idea he had for a board game which he called The Checkered Game of Life, an early version of what later became The Game of Life.{{cite book|title=Dictionary of American Biography|date=1936|publisher=Charles Scribner's Sons |location= New York |url= http://ic.galegroup.com/ic/bic1/ReferenceDetailsPage/ReferenceDetailsWindow?failOverType=&query=&prodId=BIC1&windowstate=normal&contentModules=&display-query=&mode=view&displayGroupName=Reference&limiter=&currPage=&disableHighlighting=false&displayGroups=&sortBy=&search_within_results=&p=BIC1&action=e&catId=&activityType=&scanId=&documentId=GALE%7CBT2310017266&source=Bookmark&u=mlin_n_umass&jsid=53b8f179cad5e83185c39ec48ea3b84b|access-date=December 7, 2014|ref=Biography in Context |url-access=subscription}}

file:Milton bradley in 1860s.jpg

Bradley's ventures into the production of board games began with a large failure in his lithograph business. When he printed and sold an image of the little-known Republican presidential nominee Abraham Lincoln, Bradley's work was initially met with great success.{{cite magazine|last1=Lepore|first1=Jill|author-link1=Jill Lepore|title=The Meaning of Life|magazine=The New Yorker|date=21 May 2007|volume=83|issue=13|page=38|url=http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA163737160&v=2.1&it=r&p=AONE&sw=w&asid=4c7a373745d68263f80d1a322ed4e0f4|access-date=7 December 2014 |url-access=subscription}} However, Lincoln decided to grow his distinctive beard after Bradley's print was published, leading customers to demand their money back because the image was no longer accurate. The prints suddenly became worthless, and Bradley burned his remaining inventory.{{cite book| first= James J.| last= Shea| title= The Milton Bradley Story | url= https://archive.org/details/miltonbradleysto0000shea| url-access= registration|place= New York| publisher= Newcomen Society in North America| year= 1973| page= [https://archive.org/details/miltonbradleysto0000shea/page/10 10]}} Looking for a lucrative alternate project, he found inspiration from an imported board game a friend gave him, concluding that he could produce and market a similar game to American consumers. In the winter of 1860, Bradley released The Checkered Game of Life.

File:MiltonBradleyAdvertList1872.jpg

The game proved an instant success. Bradley personally sold his first run of several hundred copies in a two-day visit to New York; by 1861, consumers had bought more than 45,000 copies. The Checkered Game of Life followed a structure similar to its American and British predecessors, with players spinning a teetotum to advance to squares representing social virtues and vices, such as "influence" or "poverty", with the former earning a player points and the latter slowing their progress. But even the most seemingly secure positions, like "Fat Office", held dangers – "Prison", "Ruin", and "Suicide".{{cite journal| first1= David Wallace| last1= Adams |first2= Victor |last2= Edmonds| title= Making Your Move: The Educational Significance of the American Board Game, 1832 to 1904| journal= History of Education Quarterly| volume= 17| number= 4 |date= Winter 1977| page= 376| doi= 10.2307/367865 | jstor= 367865 | s2cid= 144413366 }} The first player to accumulate 100 points won the game.

file:Checkered game of life mb cover.jpg

While the structure of play in The Checkered Game of Life differed little from previous board games, Bradley's game embraced a radically different concept of success. Earlier games, such as the popular Mansion of Happiness created in Puritan Massachusetts, focused entirely on promoting moral virtue. Bradley defined success in secular business terms, depicting life as a quest for accomplishment with personal virtues as a means to that end. This complemented America's burgeoning fascination with obtaining wealth, and with "the causal relationship between character and wealth," in the years following the Civil War. The game—and later board games produced by the Milton Bradley Company—also fit the nation's increasing amount of leisure time, leading to great financial success for the company.

From 1860 through the 20th century, the company he founded, Milton Bradley Company, dominated the production of American games, including The Game of Life, Easy Money, Candy Land, Operation, and Battleship. The company was a subsidiary of Pawtucket, Rhode Island–based firm Hasbro from acquisition in 1984 to shutdown in 1998. MB merged with Parker Brothers in 1998 to form Hasbro Games. The two became brands of Hasbro until 2009 when they were retired in favor of the parent company's name; the Milton Bradley name had been in use for 149 years.

Bradley published tracts and pamphlets on Friedrich Fröbel's kindergarten system. His company produced two magazines, Kindergarten News (later Kindergarten Review), and Work and Play. Neither was profitable, and Bradley's business partners withdrew their support, but Bradley persevered, publishing both magazines until the end of his life. His friend George Tapley bought out the partner's shares so that Bradley could continue manufacturing educational materials.

By the 1890s, the Milton Bradley Company had introduced the first standardized watercolor sets, and educational games such as Bradley's Word Builder and Bradley's Sentence Builder. Bradley was also the first to release crayon packages with standardized colors, a forerunner of the Binney & Smith company's Crayola crayons and Artista art supplies. Bradley's interest in art education also led him to produce a new color wheel and publish four books about teaching colors.{{cite web |url=https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/nmah_1184432 |title=Color Wheel |work=National Museum of American History |publisher=Smithsonian Institution |date=1898 |access-date=June 2, 2024}}

In 1860, Bradley married Vilona Eaton. They had no children. She died in 1867.{{cite web|last1=Ing|first1=Deborah S.|title=Bradley, Milton|url=http://www.anb.org/articles/10/10-00177.html|website=American National Biography Online| publisher= Oxford University Press|access-date=December 7, 2014 |url-access=subscription}} In 1869, he married his second wife, Ellen "Nellie" Thayer. Bradley and Nellie had two daughters.{{rp|pages=80-82}}

Milton Bradley died on May 30, 1911, in Springfield, Massachusetts, at age 74. He was buried in Springfield Cemetery in a family plot alongside his father Lewis (1810–1890), his mother Fanny (1813–1872), and his first wife Vilona. His second wife Nellie was buried there after her death in 1918.

In 2004, he was posthumously inducted into the Toy Industry Hall of Fame along with George Ditomassi of Milton Bradley Company.{{Cite web|title = About the Toy Industry Hall of Fame|url = http://www.museumofplay.org/press/fact-sheets/about-toy-industry-hall-fame|website = museumofplay.org|access-date = 2016-02-05|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20151222204552/http://www.museumofplay.org/press/fact-sheets/about-toy-industry-hall-fame|archive-date = 2015-12-22|url-status = live}}

In 2006, Bradley was posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.{{Cite news|url= http://www.invent.org/honor/inductees/inductee-detail/?IID=252|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20161220101657/http://www.invent.org/honor/inductees/inductee-detail/?IID=252|url-status= dead|archive-date= December 20, 2016|title= Inductee Detail|newspaper= NIHF|language= en-US|access-date= 2016-12-07}}

• Color in the Schoolroom (1890)
• Color in the Kindergarten (1893)
• [https://archive.org/details/elementarycolor00bradgoog Elementary Color] (1895)
• [https://archive.org/details/watercolorsinsch00brad Water Colors in the Schoolroom] (1900)
• Bradley published a set of rules to play croquet in 1866 written by an author using the pseudonym Prof. A Rover.{{cite book |last1= Rover |first1= A| title= Croquet; Its Principles and Rules: With Explanations and Illustrations for the Lawn and Parlor| year= 1973| publisher= Milton Bradley & Co |location= Springfield, Massachusetts |oclc= 7334661}}

• {{ cite patent

| country = US

| number = 53561 A

| status = patent

| title = Social game

| pubdate = 1866-04-03

| inventor = Milton Bradley

| assign1 =

| assign2 =

| class =

}}

• {{ cite patent

| country = US

| number = 416437 A

| status = patent

| title = Drawing Board

| pubdate = 1889-12-03

| inventor = Milton Bradley

| assign1 =

| assign2 =

| class =

}}

• {{ cite patent

| country = US

| number = 537887 A

| status = patent

| title = Color-mixing top

| pubdate = 1895-04-23

| inventor = Milton Bradley

| assign1 =

| assign2 =

| class =

}}

• {{ cite patent

| country = US

| number = 310873 A

| status = patent

| title = Toy spring-gun

| pubdate = 1885-01-20

| inventor = Milton Bradley

| assign1 =

| assign2 =

| class =

}}

• {{ cite patent

| country = US

| number = 492604 A

| status = patent

| title = Color-disk rotating mechanism

| pubdate = 1893-02-28

| inventor = Milton Bradley

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| class =

}}

• {{ cite patent

| country = US

| number =524160 A

| status = patent

| title = Compasses

| pubdate = 1894-08-07

| inventor = Milton Bradley

| assign1 =

| assign2 =

| class =

}}

• {{ cite patent

| country = US

| number =215205 A

| status = patent

| title = Improvement in paper-cutting machines

| pubdate = 1879-05-13

| inventor = Milton Bradley

| assign1 =

| assign2 =

| class =

}}

• {{ cite patent

| country = US

| number =225457 A

| status = patent

| title = Process of engraving printing-surfaces

| pubdate = 1880-03-16

| inventor = Milton Bradley

| assign1 =

| assign2 =

| class =

}}

• {{ cite patent

| country = US

| number =418437 A

| status = patent

| title = Kindergarten-table

| pubdate = 1889-12-31

| inventor = Milton Bradley

| assign1 =

| assign2 =

| class =

}}

• Invented the Myriopticon panorama viewer depicting scenes in the American Civil War.{{cite journal|last1=Marten|first1=James|title=History in a Box: Milton Bradley's Myriopticon|journal=The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth|date=Winter 2009|volume=2|issue=1|pages=3–7|url=http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/journal_of_the_history_of_childhood_and_youth/v002/2.1.marten.pdf|access-date=December 7, 2014|doi=10.1353/hcy.0.0042|s2cid=144440849|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141208150302/http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=%2Fjournals%2Fjournal_of_the_history_of_childhood_and_youth%2Fv002%2F2.1.marten.pdf|archive-date=December 8, 2014|url-status=live}}

The story of Milton Bradley and The Checkered Game of Life is featured as one of the segments in Season 3, Episode 6 of the Comedy Central show Drunk History.

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• [http://www.life.com/gallery/60931/milton-bradley-a-playful-legacy#index/0 Milton Bradley: A Playful Legacy] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110828150330/http://www.life.com/gallery/60931/milton-bradley-a-playful-legacy#index/0 |date=August 28, 2011 }} – slideshow by Life magazine
• {{Gutenberg author|id=40885|name=Milton Bradley}}
• {{Internet Archive author|sname=Milton Bradley|sopt=t}}
• {{Find a Grave|3076}}
• {{Librivox author |id=14676}}

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Category:1836 births

Category:1911 deaths

Category:Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences alumni

Category:19th-century American inventors

Category:People from Vienna, Maine

Category:Artists from Springfield, Massachusetts

Category:Businesspeople from Maine

Category:Businesspeople from Springfield, Massachusetts

Category:American board game designers

Category:People from Lowell, Massachusetts

Category:19th-century American businesspeople

Category:Milton Bradley Company