thumb|upright|Print advertisement for Erector Set, circa 1922
thumb|An early Erector set
Erector Set (trademark styled as "ERECTOR") was a brand of metal toy construction sets which were patented by Alfred Carlton Gilbert and first sold by his company, the Mysto Manufacturing Company of New Haven, Connecticut, in 1913. In 1916, the company was reorganized as the A. C. Gilbert Company. The brand continued its independent existence under various corporate ownerships until 1990, when Meccano bought the Erector brand and consolidated its worldwide marketing with its own brand. Erector coverage focuses on the historical legacy of the classic Erector Set; for later developments under the "Erector by Meccano" brand, see the Meccano article.
Basic Erector parts included thin metal beams with regularly spaced holes for assembly using nuts and bolts. A frequently promoted patented feature was the ability to fabricate a strong but lightweight hollow structural girder from four long flat pieces of stamped sheet steel, held together by bolts and nuts per .
- In the 1970s, information theory pioneer Claude Shannon constructed a bounce-juggling machine from an Erector set.
- In the late 1980s, with an Erector Set, various old toys, and bits of jewelry, Jack Kevorkian jerry-rigged a machine he called the Thanatron (later renamed to the Mercitron). Three bottles were suspended from a rickety beam, one filled with a saline solution to open a patient's veins, another with barbiturates for sedation, and a third with potassium chloride to stop the heart. After Kevorkian connected the patient to an IV, he or she would pull a chain on the device to start the lethal medications flowing. He called it his "Rube Goldberg suicide device."
- In the late 1990s, engineer Mark Sumner used Erector to create a working model for "Soarin'", an attraction at Disney's California Adventure in Anaheim, California, and Walt Disney World's Epcot near Orlando, Florida.