Fernand Martin ‘Rubber Band’ Engine from 1878

IN THE PREHISTORY of the development of tin toys, there were no real mechanical motors yet, so Martin started his first toy with a very simple but extremely efficient motion mechanism.

In the early days Martin used a very simple rubber band (elastic) as the drive. By turning it on, the toy started to move. The system consists mainly of a crank, a rubber band and a movement mechanism. The drive mechanism was adjusted for each toy, such as up and down, right, left, spinning etc.

As an example, the first piece of Martin: the fish from 1878 – Poisson Nageur. Martin started in 1875 in a shed behind his house, with his first attempts to make toys but in 1878 the first real toy was a real swimming fish patent number 128445 from Jan-01-1879 and started with the production number 100.

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