Icons + Artifacts: Flexible Flyer Sled

Even in the late 1800s, diversification of your product line made sense. New Jersey-based Samuel Allen manufactured farm equipment and held more than three hundred patents, but his factory was only busy in fall, winter, and spring. It sat idle in the summer and each fall he scrambled to rehire employees. What he needed was a winter product to be made in the summer. After some time at the drawing board, in 1884 he introduced his first cold-weather offerings: the Fleetwing steerable snow sled for up to six girls to ride, followed by the Fairy Coaster folding sled for three to four adults. At a cost of fifty dollars, they turned out to be too expensive for the public, but in 1889 he struck gold with the, yes, you guessed it, Flexible Flyer sled.

Sledding was huge in the 1800s. This was the time of the Little Ice Age, and North America was particularly cold and snowy. And it might seem a leap to go from inventing