Morris Michtom

Morris Michtom
Born 1870
Russia
Died July 21, 1938(1938-07-21) (aged 67–68)
Nationality Jewish-American
Occupation Inventor, businessman
Spouse(s) Rose
Children Emily (1897-1986)
A 1902 political cartoon in The Washington Post spawned the teddy bear name.

Morris Michtom (1870 – July 21, 1938),[1][2] was a Russian-born businessman and inventor, who with his wife Rose, invented the teddy bear in 1902.[3] They founded the Ideal Novelty and Toy Company, which after Michtom's death became the largest doll-making company in the United States.

Biography

Michtom was born to a Jewish family[4][3] and immigrated to New York in 1887. He sold candy in his shop at 404 Tompkins Avenue[5] in Bedford-Stuyvesant Brooklyn by day and made stuffed animals with his wife Rose at night.

The teddy bear was inspired by a cartoon by Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Clifford K. Berryman depicting American president Theodore Roosevelt having compassion for a bear at the end of an unsuccessful hunting trip in Mississippi in 1902, he was also later nicknamed "Teddy". Michtom saw the drawing and created a tiny plush bear cub which he sent to Roosevelt. After receiving permission to use Roosevelt's name,[6] Michtom put a plush bear in the shop window with a sign "Teddy's bear." After the creation of the bear in 1902, the sale of the bears was so brisk that in 1907 Michtom created the Ideal Novelty and Toy Company.[7]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Stephanie Bernardo Johns (1981). The ethnic almanac. Doubleday. p. 260. ISBN 978-0-385-14143-7. Retrieved 1 October 2011.
  2. ↑ The Rubber age. Palmerton Pub. Co. 1938. Retrieved 1 October 2011.
  3. 1 2 "Rose and Morris Michtom and the Invention of the Teddy Bear". American Jewish Historical Society. Retrieved 20 March 2011.
  4. ↑ Lawrence J. Epstein (2007). "At the Edge of a Dream: The Story of Jewish Immigrants on New York's Lower East Side, 1880-1920". p. 138.
  5. ↑ SAVE BEDFORD STUYVESANT: The Teddy Bear was born in Bedford Stuyvesant. Savebedfordstuyvesant.blogspot.com (2009-04-02). Retrieved on 2011-10-01.
  6. ↑ "Teddy Bears". Library Of Congress. Retrieved 2007-12-10.
  7. ↑ True story of the Teddy Bear by The Theodore Roosevelt Association. Theodoreroosevelt.org. Retrieved on 2011-10-01.


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