Old Familiar Memories - Photo 58

Rubber-Band Windup Balsa Plane

We played with a number of these gliders. After some flings with balsa gliders we graduated to the rubber band gliders. You had to resist winding rubber band too much and breaking the rubber band. William L. "Bill" Effinger, Jr., founded Berkeley Models in a three-car garage in Brooklyn in 1933 to help support himself through engineering school. The following year he produced his company's first rubber-powered model-airplane kits, the Consolidated Fleetster and the Fokker triplane, and the year afterward introduced the first gas-powered model-airplane kit, the Buccaneer.