Milton Bradley - Wikipedia

Thank you, my friend Maj Marty Hogan for making us aware that November 8 is the anniversary of the birth of American business magnate, game pioneer and publisher Milton Bradley "credited by many with launching the board game industry with the Milton Bradley Company."
I remember playing the Game of Life as a child and my mother enjoyed Yahtzee even after she developed Alzheimer's Disease.

Milton Bradley
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIOlknKw4es

Images:
1. Milton Bradley 1860s.
2. 1860 Game board from the Checkered Game of Life by Milton Bradley
3. Milton Bradley Game of Life [1977]
4. Milton Bradley Yahtzee.

Biographies
1. biographybase.com/biography/Bradley_Milton.html
2. nndb.com/people/106/000162617/

Background from biographybase.com/biography/Bradley_Milton.html
"Milton Bradley was a game pioneer, credited by many with launching the game industry in North America. But years before he invented his first game, Bradley enjoyed a successful career in lithography.

Born in Vienna, Maine, in 1836, Bradley chose a career in printing and lithography in his late teens and set about learning the trade. In 1860, he set up Massachusetts' first color lithography shop in Springfield. One of his lithographs, a likeness of Abraham Lincoln, sold especially well, until Lincoln grew a beard and rendered Bradley's beardless image out-of-date.

At about the same time Bradley's lithography business was beginning to wane, Bradley visited a friend who challenged him to a game. Although it hasn't been recorded, this was probably an imported European game using a spinner to determine how many spaces a player moves. Bradley was inspired with a new idea he would invent a game. Bradley designed a board game called The Checkered Game of Life. The object was to obtain a happy old age instead of financial ruin and a player's luck was decided by a numbered spinner. Players moved game pieces over sixty-four squares, which could be good, bad, or neutral according to their color.

By 1861, Bradley had sold more than 45,000 copies of his game. He formed Milton Bradley and Company in 1864 to print other games and game manuals. But games were not Bradley's only interest. In 1869, Bradley published America's first book on kindergartens, Paradise of Childhood, by Friedrich Froebel. Bradley's interest in childhood and children's education continued. In addition to printing a series of kindergarten manuals, newsletters, and children's books, Bradley wrote and published four books on teaching color to kids, including Colour in the Kindergarten (1893).

In 1880, Bradley expanded his business and began making jigsaw puzzles.

In 1911, Milton Bradley died, but the business he started continued to grow and prosper. The Milton Bradley Company, has retained its place as one of the world's leading manufacturers of games and toys. It is now a division of Hasbro, Inc."

2. Background from .nndb.com/people/106/000162617/
"Milton Bradley
Born: 8-Nov-1836 at Vienna, Maine
Died: 30-May-1911 at Springfield, Massachusetts
Cause of death: unspecified
Remains: Buried, Springfield Cemetery, Springfield, MA
Occupation: Business, Educator
Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Board games

Milton Bradley worked as a draftsman, patent agent, and lithographer, and owned the first color lithography shop in Massachusetts. When business slowed he devised and started printing copies of what he called The Checkered Game of Life. Introduced in 1860 and considered to be the first "family board game", it was an instant success, and in 1864 Bradley and his business partners formed Milton Bradley & Company. He bought out his partners in 1878, and re-named the business the Milton Bradley Company. The company's other early products included jigsaw puzzles, croquet rules and sets, and zoetropes -- spinning, slitted drums which, when pre-printed picture sheets were inserted, create the illusion of moving pictures.

Bradley was a firm believer in German educator Friedrich Froebel's then-radical notion of kindergarten as a cornerstone of childhood education, and pushed the idea in America with an almost evangelical zeal. He published the first English translation of Froebel's Paradise of Childhood, and established the first kindergarten in Springfield, Massachusetts -- and taught there, along with his wife. Bradley wrote several books advocating use of the six primary colors as part of early childhood education, and calling for a standardized system of color identification, enabling distant print shops to publish the same works in the same colors. During his lifetime, a major part of the Milton Bradley Company's business involved educational materials, including phonetics-based reading instruction guides, and Work & Play, an educational magazine for children.

Since Bradley's death in 1911, the business he founded has introduced such enjoyable diversions as Battleship in 1931, Chutes and Ladders in 1943, Yahtzee in 1956, Operation in 1965, Twister in 1966, and Connect Four in 1975. To celebrate the company's centennial, Bradley's original game was re-designed and re-introduced, its name shortened to The Game of Life, in 1960. The Milton Bradley Company became a subsidiary of Hasbro in 1984, and Parcheesi and Scrabble became Milton Bradley games after being purchased by Hasbro in 1989.

Father: Lewis Bradley (craftsman)
Mother: Fannie Lyford Bradley
Wife: Vilona Eaton Bradley (m. 1860, d. 1862)
Wife: Ellen Thayer Bradley ("Nellie", school teacher, m. 1869, two daughters)

High School: Lowell High School, Lowell, MA
University: Harvard University (attended)

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Played many a Milton Bradly boardgame growing up !

I always thought that Milton-Bradley were two men in a partnership? That was till I read about him in your article Capt. Hogan. Milton Bradley was quite the inventor and games man. Thanks for the share