Betty James

She attended Altoona Area High School and then Pennsylvania State University[citation needed], leaving when she married Richard.

[2][3] Her husband, an engineer, conceived of the toy in 1943 while working at Cramp Shipbuilding Yard in the Port Richmond section of Philadelphia after a torsion spring fell off a table and started flipping end-over-end across the floor.

In 1996, when the Slinky's retail price ranged from $1.89 to $2.69, she told The New York Times: "So many children can’t have expensive toys, and I feel a real obligation to them.

[5] In the face of declining sales, her husband left the family and moved to Bolivia in 1960 to join Wycliffe Bible Translators.

[6] She took over management of the firm, and responsibility for the family's six children,[7] running it for almost 40 years until selling the company to POOF Products of Plymouth, Michigan in 1998.