Fridge Magnets as an A6 Jigsaw Puzzle

 

It’s become increasingly common to find a household fridge that is covered in some sort of magnet, whether it’s a promotional magnet or a souvenir.

It wasn’t even until 1913 that the first commercial fridge was invented by a man called Fred W. Wolf.

Although fridges didn’t see widespread use until General Electric released their “Monitor-Top” fridge in 1927.

Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t until after fridges were invented that we began to use magnets on them, and this didn’t come until around the middle of the 20th Century.

It was around this time that it became common to attach a magnet to plastic numbers or letters, which were used as teaching aids.

The first fridge magnets that were actually designed for the purpose of being used on a fridge were invented by a man called Sam Hardcastle.

He had been tasked by companies in the space industry with inventing a form of magnetic letters and numbers which were completely magnetic, instead of just being a piece of plastic with a magnet attached.

Sam Hardcastle created a way to mix iron oxide, essentially iron dust, with vinyl, a slightly flexible plastic.

He found that the magnets he created suited the purpose perfectly and held onto surfaces much better as the whole of the “magnet” was magnetized.

Sam realized that his magnets had much more potential and started an advertising company that sold some of the world’s first magnetic fridge advertisements.

He went on to branch into the souvenir industry by creating specialized magnets for each US state with interesting notes on each of them for the tourism industry.

Around the time that Sam Hardcastle was developing his fridge magnets, another player stepped into the game.

A man called William Zimmerman acquired the first patent for a new type of fridge magnets in the 1970s, which were in the form of small cartoons and were quite useful to hold things on fridges.

The Bisset Collection Fridge Magnets.... as a Jigsaw Puzzle!

Size A 6 consisting of 6 pieces

Price with shipping included ( within in SA )

R499.00