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trained as a draftsman, drawing plans for railroad cars

lithography business in 1860.

Bradley became a game maker fortuitously

Playing a board game with a friend, he had an idea for one of his own.

He was an early advocate of the emerging kindergarten movement started by Friedrich Fröbel in Germany. Fröbel used toys, called Fröbel’s gifts, to spark the imagination of young children

pastime and Puritanical preparation rolled into one.

forty-thousand copies

beginning of the Civil War

Soldiers got bored. And a reasonably priced game kit was just what they needed.

Charitable organizations bought and distributed kits made by Bradley.

players moved pieces on a converted checkerboard, with labels added to the squares. Landing on the square labeled “industry” transported a player to the square labeled “wealth”. “Gambling” led to “ruin”; “intemperance” to “poverty.” The game was called the “Checkered Game of Life.”

embraced the idea, and supplied blossoming kindergartens with educational toys.

he continued to produce educational toys even when it put his business at risk

pursued lithography and in 1860, he set up the first color lithography shop in Springfield, Massachusetts

moved forward with an idea he had for a board game which he called The Checkered Game of Life, an early version of what later became The Game of Life.

2004, he was posthumously inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame along with George Ditomassi of Milton Bradley Company. Through the 20th century the company he founded in 1860, Milton Bradley Company dominated the production of American games, with titles like Candyland, Operation, and Battleship. The company is now a subsidiary of Pawtucket, Rhode Island-based Hasbro.

In search of a lucrative alternative project in which to employ his drafting skills, Bradley found inspiration from an imported board game given to him by a friend. Concluding that he could produce and market a similar game to American consumers, Milton Bradley released The Checkered Game of Life in the winter of 1860.

Bradley personally sold his first run of several hundred copies in one two-day period in New York; by 1861, consumers had bought over 45,000 copies.

While the structure of play used in The Checkered Game of Life differed little from previous board games, Bradley's game embraced a radically different concept of success. Earlier children's games, such as the popular Mansion of Happiness developed in Puritan Massachusetts, were concerned entirely with providing an attractive venue from which to promote moral virtue. But Bradley preferred to define success in secular business terms consistent with America's emerging focus on "the causal relationship between character and wealth." This approach, which depicted life as a quest for accomplishment in which personal virtues provided a means to an end, rather than a point of focus, complemented America's burgeoning fascination with obtaining wealth in the years following the Civil War.

Bradley established a set of rules to play croquet in 1866. Bradley was one of the marketers of the zoetrope, a spinning slotted drum with pre-printed images to create the illusion of motion pictures. Though this was not definitely known as of November 2010, Bradley might have been awarded the patent for the one-arm paper cutter.

graduation in 1930

ventually selling 60 million yards

multi-million dollar company.

On this solid basis, Milton continued to produce games and puzzles, such as word games, trivia knowledge games, biblical games, traditional games, rebus-based games, and an early type of Monopoly called “The Way to Make Money.” Additionally, Milton researched and codified the rules for croquet that was included with his croquet sets. Those rules became the standard in America.

Milton continued to produce games, especially parlor games and jigsaw puzzles.

When Milton died in 1911, the company was temporarily led by Ralph Ellis before it was co-chaired by Milton's son-in-law Robert Ingersoll and George's son, William Tapley. By 1920, Milton Bradley Company had five manufacturing sites in Springfield.