The Ives Manufacturing Company, an American toy manufacturer from 1868 to 1932, was the largest manufacturer of toy trains in the United States from 1910 until 1924, when Lionel Corporation overtook it in sales.
Early history
Ives was founded in Plymouth, Connecticut by Edward Ives, a descendant of Plymouth colony governor William Bradford. The company initially produced paper dolls whose limbs moved in response to hot air, but soon began producing a wide range of toys, including a toy cannon that shot using real gunpowder and also toy clockwork powered dolls and animals that could move. The clockwork toys were designed by Jerome Secor, Nathan Warner, and Arthur Hotchkiss and by the 1880s, Ives was a leading producer of these toys.
Its emphasis shifted to trains as its designs were copied by other toymakers who were willing to sell them more cheaply. Ives' trains were made of tin or cast iron and initially powered by clockwork, and later electric trains
On December 22, 1900, a disastrous fire struck and destroyed the Ives & Williams Company main factory destroying the building and all the patterns, parts and tools for manufacturing the cast-iron toys. The fire prompted a re-design by William R. Haberlin for 1901 that resulted in Ives' first toy train that ran on track. In 1901, The Ives Manufacturing Company, in rented space from William R. Haberlin and Timothy F. Hayes, began producing the first "O" gauge trains in the United States to run on fabricated sectional track. The trains were powered by clockwork machinery inside the toy, and sales for the year totaled $2,600.00. During that year and 1902, the die stamping production of trains, cars and track was subcontracted out to Haberlin and Hayes Bridgeport Tool & Die. In the end, the fire benefited the Ives Manufacturing Company, as the insurance money permitted it to build a modern factory with state-of-the-art tooling.
Although several companies were selling electric trains at the time, Ives opted to remain with clockwork, partly because many U.S. homes still lacked electricity.
Initially, Ives' greatest competition came from German imports, and not from domestic manufacturers. Ives' response was with marketing, which it directed at its target audience, the twelve-year-old boy. Its campaigns addressed boys as business partners, telling them that the success of Ives' fictional railroad, Ives Railway Lines, depended on their shrewd management. This worked, building brand loyalty.
William R. Haberlin
William R. Haberlin is the man who made all of the tools and dies for the original Ives O-gauge ("O" gauge) clockwork train line in 1901! Everything (Except the patterns for the iron locomotives bodies, which were made by Charles A. Hotchkiss, mentioned in Model Craftsman - March 1944, and the clockwork mechanisms themselves, manufactured by an outside company (The Reeves Manufacturing Company in New Haven, Connecticut and later in Milford, Connecticut) that went into this line was tooled up by Mr. Haberlin, and his partner, T.F. Hayes (Timothy F. Hayes), in their tool shop, the Hayes & Haberlin Machine Company in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
The work included the first tools and machinery ever built in the United States for manufacturing tinplate track. The first year, as Ives was in a hurry to get track, a set of drop-hammers were made up for the rails and ties. The tinplate was first cut up into strips and then placed under the drop-hammer. The next year Mr. Haberlin and Mr. Hayes made up regular dies for use in a punch press, which would cut the rails and ties out of sheet tin. Thirty thousand rails could be made in a day; a working day in 1902 being ten hours. Ives did not make a machine for rolling their rails until somewhat later (In 1907-1908, after Haberlin had left the Ives' Manufacturing Company to work for Sir Thomas Edison as a toolmaker/machinist with his brother John E. Haberlin in Edison's laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey).
A little later, Mr. Haberlin went to work for Ives entirely, selling them his tool shop (Hayes & Haberlin Machine Company), and as a tool maker, designed and made all of their early dies. In 1906, Mr. Haberlin left Ives and started making up dies for himself, founding, on April 6, 1907, the American Miniature Railway Company in Bridgeport, Connecticut (which was both Ives' and Haberlin's hometown), until recently one of the least known of the early American tinplate manufacturers. They continued in business, making a line similar (because Haberlin was the first to have designed and invented it) to Ives, until 1912.