Who was the real Milton Bradley?

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Why: The Milton Bradley Company made the critically-acclaimed New Kids on the Block Game.

Answer: He was born in 1836 in Vienna, Maine. When he grew bored drafting plans for railroad cars, he taught himself lithography and printmaking. During the 1860 presidential campaign, he created an image of Abraham Lincoln that sold well in the heavily Republican Massachusetts. However, Lincoln’s decision to grow a beard, and his resulting iconic connection to facial hair, immediately rendered Bradley’s lithograph obsolete, and left his fledgling printing business without a marketable image.

In 1860, a friend gave him an imported board game. Bradley decided to produce and market a similar game for American consumers, and soon released The Checkered Game of Life. He sold over 40,000 copies that winter.

In 1869, Bradley began to publish educational pamphlets based on the virtues of Friedrich Fröbel's kindergarten system, which stressed aesthetic and sensory stimulation, brief lessons, simple terms, and children's instinctual preferences for play and spontaneity. His company produced 2 magazines on the subject - neither of which turned a profit.

He died in 1911.

Source: Wikipedia

The More You Know: Milton Bradley also invented the paper cutter.