Victor Appleton

Tom Swift and His Electric Runabout Victor Appleton

Three very successful series of stories aimed at children and teens were created by a man who had a book packaging house and didn't want to cause confusion. So, none of the stories ever had his name on them. Instead, Edward Stratemeyer hired several writers and provided them with story ideas that were then published under the pseudonym Victor Appleton. They were tales of the adventures of a teenager named Tom Swift. He was portrayed as a youngster who didn't have a lot of formal education but was inventive and science minded. This led to more than one hundred volumes with a variety of broad-ranging adventures and creative ideas placing emphasis on invention, science and technology.

Stratemeyer later came up with successful stories about The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. It is said the fertile Stratemeyer imagination often found him jotting down a short page of notes involving plots and assigning a stable of about a half-dozen writers to fill in the blanks. The Hardy Boys were amateur detectives often able to solve various cases when solutions eluded grownup professionals. First appearance of the female counterpart Nancy Drew series first appeared in 1930 and ran for nearly three-quarters of a century. We listen now to Tom Swift with one of his top inventions.