Industry Toys and hobbies Website None Founded 1916 | Products Chemistry sets Headquarters Hagerstown | |
Key people Harold M. Porter (Owner)
Jermain D. Porter | ||
Porter Chemical Company was an American toy manufacturer that developed and produced chemistry sets aimed as educational toys for aspiring junior scientists. The company's Chemcraft kits were first sold at major retail by Woodward & Lothrop, and appeared soon after at other retailers in the country. The company would later form a relationship with the Lionel Corporation, famed American maker of toy trains. The company also made the Microcraft line of microscope sets. The Chemcraft and Microcraft line competed with similar sets offered by A. C. Gilbert Company as part of a boom in science educational toys spurred by the Space Race between the US and USSR in the late 1950s.
It reached the height of its popularity in the 1950s when it would even mine its own chemicals, give out scholarships, and was the biggest users of test tubes in the USA. It sold over a million chemistry kits before going out of business in the 1980s over increased liability concerns. [1]