Berkeley Models

Background

Berkeley Models was founded by Bill Effinger in a three-car garage in Brooklyn in 1933 to support himself through engineering school. The company's name came from his family's home address at 53 Berkeley Place.

Its first rubber-powered kits, the Consolidated Fleetster and Fokker triplane, appeared in 1934, followed in 1935 by the Buccaneer, the first gas-powered model-airplane kit. By November 1935, Effinger was advertising six kits in his 'Master Models' series of scale designs with 20-inch wingspans. In 1936, the Cavalier kit featured a nine-foot wingspan.

Effinger made the company his full-time career after graduating with a mechanical engineering degree from Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute in 1938, later earning a degree in aeronautical engineering from MIT. During World War II, he served in the U.S. Navy, leaving day-to-day operations to James F. Barry Jr., who had been hired as head foreman in 1935.

After the war, Effinger moved Berkeley to a facility on Railroad Avenue in West Hempstead, Long Island. By 1952, the company claimed distribution through 85 distributors and 4,500 dealers, and in 1957 Effinger estimated two million kits had been produced. The company created the advertising mascot 'Bill Berkeley' in 1952.

Did You Know?

• Comic-book artist Don Heck, future co-creator of Iron Man, spent a year drawing model-airplane views for Berkeley circa 1957.