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Bradley grew up in a working-class household in Lowell, Massachusetts.

completing high school he found work as a draftsman before enrolling at the Lawrence Scientific School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1856, he secured employment at the Watson Company in Springfield, Massachusetts.

company was shuttered during the recession of 1858, he entered business for himself as a mechanical draftsman and patent agent

Board game pioneer who invented The Game of Life

American draftsman and lithographer Milton Bradley founded the Milton Bradley Company, famous makers of family board games such as The Game of Life, CandyLand and Twister. Raised in Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts, Bradley attended Harvard's Lawrence Scientific School from 1854 to 1856. He then worked as a draftsman for the Wason Car Works, manufacturers of railcars, until 1860, when he founded a lithography business in Springfield, Massachusetts. His initial success with a lithograph of clean-shaven presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln was dashed after Lincoln grew his famous beard, but Bradley moved on with a board game called The Checkered Game of Life. Now called The Game of Life, it is part of a Milton Bradley catalog that includes Yahtzee, Connect 4, Chutes and Ladders, Mouse Trap, Operation and Big Ben jigsaw puzzles. Mr. Bradley was also an advocate of kindergarten programs and early art education, and for many years his company manufactured materials and published books for childhood education. Bradley himself published several books in the field, including Color in Kindergarten (1893) and Water Colors in the Schoolroom (1900).

In 1860, Mr. Milton Bradley was a successful lithographer whose major product was a portrait of Abraham Lincoln. When Mr. Lincoln grew his trademark beard, Bradley's clean-shaven portrait was no longer popular. Out of desperation, Mr. Bradley printed up several copies of a game he'd invented called, "The Checkered Game of Life." Its immediate popularity put Milton Bradley in the game business. This was Milton Bradley's first game. He sold 45,000 copies of the game by the end of the year.

began to work on making an American board game similar to an imported game he had played with friends. This new game used a top that spun to indicate the number of squares to move, a first in American board games. Bradley was also the first to redefine the purpose of the board game. In his first game, The Checkered Game of Life, Bradley continued the tradition of using the game to impart moral advice to those playing, but he also defined success in the game by looking at how much wealth each player was able to create and obtain.

Bradley found success when he used his troubled business to print copies of this new game. Within two days, he sold all the copies he had printed and sold another 40,000 copies of the game in the first year alone.

The Smashed-Up Locomotive, Candy Land, and Battleship.

In 1885 C. Harold Smith founded a company with his cousin, Edwin Binney.

ons crayola company binney (186

"Checkered Game of Life," in 1860. It sold 45,000 copies in the first year. The Milton Bradley Co. continued to dominate the production of games through the 1900s, with more recent, familiar games such as "The Game of Life," "Candyland," "Battleship" and "Operation."

Bradley printed and personally sold a new parlour game, The Checkered Game of Life, which became so profitable that he formed Milton Bradley and Company (1864) to print games and game manuals