Albert Frederick Schoenhut (1849-1912) created the A. Schoenhut Company, one of the leading

toy A toy or plaything is an object that is used primarily to provide entertainment. Simple examples include toy blocks, board games, and dolls. Toys are often designed for use by children, although many are designed specifically for adults and pet ...

producers in

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at the turn of the twentieth century. In 1872, he founded the

Schoenhut Piano Company The Schoenhut Piano Company is an American manufacturer of toy pianos, dolls, and other wooden toys. It was founded in 1872 in Philadelphia as the A. Schoenhut Company by German immigrant and woodcarver Albert Schoenhut, who had begun making toy p ...

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

, which later became known as the A. Schoenhut Company and was incorporated in 1897. They established a reputation, based on German handicraft traditions, and created toy pianos and other

musical instruments A musical instrument is a device created or adapted to make musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can be considered a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. A person who pl ...

in the early days. Eventually, they introduced dolls, play sets, games and more and they became the largest toy manufacturer in America. In 1919, Schoenhut

patented A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A p ...

his “All-Wood Perfection Art Doll” and in 1997, the

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issued stamps of Classic American Dolls and included his wooden dolls as part of the collection.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Schoenhut, Albert Frederick 1849 births 1912 deaths 19th-century American businesspeople