Morris Michtom
{{Short description|American toy inventor}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=May 2024}} {{Use American English|date=May 2024}}
{{Infobox person
| image = Morris Michtom in New York.png
| imagesize = 250px
| caption = Michtom in New York
| birth_name =
| birth_date = {{birth-date|September 12, 1869}}
| birth_place = Russia
| death_date = {{Death date and age|1938|07|21|1869|09|12|mf=yes}}
| death_place = Brooklyn, New York
| occupation = Inventor, businessman
| education =
| nationality =
| spouse = Rose
| partner =
| children = Emily (1897–1986) and Joseph (1890–1951)
| relatives =
| signature =
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}}
Morris Michtom (September 12, 1869 – July 21, 1938){{cite book|author=Stephanie Bernardo Johns|title=The ethnic almanac|page=260|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3Xaor66VeTQC|accessdate=1 October 2011|year=1981|publisher=Doubleday|isbn=978-0-385-14143-7}}{{cite book|title=The Rubber age|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1YLmAAAAMAAJ|accessdate=1 October 2011|year=1938|publisher=Palmerton Pub. Co.}} was a Russian-born businessman and inventor who, with his wife Rose, also a Russian Jewish immigrant who lived in Brooklyn, founded the Ideal Novelty and Toy Company. Michtom came up with the idea for the teddy bear in 1902{{cite web |url=http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Michtoms.html |title=Rose and Morris Michtom and the Invention of the Teddy Bear| work=American Jewish Historical Society |access-date=20 March 2011}} (the same time Richard Steiff in Germany came up with an idea for a stuffed toy bear with movable limbs). After Michtom's death, the company became the largest doll-making company in the United States.
Biography
Image:TheodoreRooseveltTeddyBear.jpg
Michtom was born into a Jewish family{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TVTgKbrdINkC&q=Morris+Michtom&pg=PA138|page=138|title=At the Edge of a Dream: The Story of Jewish Immigrants on New York's Lower East Side, 1880-1920|author=Lawrence J. Epstein|date=2007|publisher=John Wiley & Sons |isbn=9780787986223}} on September 12, 1869, and immigrated to New York in 1887, when he also married his wife, Rose Katz (1867–1937), who was born in Romania. He sold candy in his shop at 404 Tompkins Avenue[http://savebedfordstuyvesant.blogspot.com/2009/04/teddy-bear-was-born-in-bedford.html SAVE BEDFORD STUYVESANT: The Teddy Bear was born in Bedford Stuyvesant]. Savebedfordstuyvesant.blogspot.com (2009-04-02). Retrieved on 2011-10-01. in Bedford-Stuyvesant Brooklyn by day and made stuffed animals with his wife Rose at night.
The teddy bear was inspired by a cartoon by Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Clifford K. Berryman depicting American president Theodore Roosevelt—commonly called "Teddy"—having compassion for a bear at the end of an unsuccessful hunting trip in Mississippi in 1902. Michtom saw the drawing and created a tiny plush bear cub which he sent to Roosevelt. Michtom put a plush bear in the shop window with a sign "Teddy's bear." After the creation of the bear in 1902, the sale of the bears was so brisk that in 1907 Michtom created the Ideal Novelty and Toy Company.[http://www.theodoreroosevelt.org/life/tr_teddy.htm True story of the Teddy Bear by The Theodore Roosevelt Association]. Theodoreroosevelt.org. Retrieved on 2011-10-01.
Michtom died in Brooklyn, New York on the July 21, 1938, at the age of 68.
See also
References
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Category:20th-century American inventors
Category:Emigrants from the Russian Empire to the United States
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