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Lionel Early Standard Gauge trolley No. 3
Additional copy on Joshua Lionel Cowen provided by Judy Gonyeau, managing editor
oshua Lionel Cowen was an extraordinary inventor Cowen started as an apprentice at a dry-cell battery maker and then
and entrepreneur. From a young age, Cowen’s moved on to assemble battery lamps at Acme Electric Lamp Company
in Manhattan.
Jmechanical talent was evident to the point that his In 1899, at just 22 years of age, Cowen invented and obtained a
parents enrolled him in the Peter Cooper Institute
patent for the flash-lamp, an early photographer’s flash-light source.
High School which was, oddly enough, named for the Because of his talent, the U.S. Navy gave Cowen $12,000 to produce
24,000 detonators for underwater mines. That money seeded his busi-
inventor of the steam locomotive. From there he attempted ness, the Lionel Manufacturing Company, and allowed him to set up a
to gain a college degree but found the pull of mechanical production facility. The mission of the company was to “manufacture
electrical, mechanical, and industrial appliances … and toys.”
work too strong to keep him contained.
Once while walking through New York’s business district, Cowen
was admiring window displays when he envisioned an idea that would
Pre-Locomotive Period draw the eye to the merchandise in a different way: movement. He had
been working with electricity and how it could be harnessed to make
items move – he used an electric motor to drive a small fan and then
designed a shallow wooden box on wheels that he propelled around a
set of crude tracks. The “Electric Express” gondola was created, and the
first one sold for four dollars to Robert Ingersoll’s novelty store in
Manhattan for a window display.
Selling these items as a marketing tool was the intent, but most users
were buying them as toys. Cowen took that cue and created a realistic-
looking electric trolley car made of metal and the marketing tool
transformed into what would become the most popular mechanical toy
to this day: the model train. Here is the Lionel Story.
First Period: 1906 Trolleys and Steam Engines
Lionel Early Standard Gauge trolley No.1
Lionel No. 5 circa 1907
In 1900, Cowen and Harry Grant founded what became one of the
world’s greatest toy train companies. In 1901 they produced their first
trains. Most new businesses fail within five years, and of Lionel’s many
Lionel Early Standard Gauge trolley No. 2
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