Pin Wheel Or Windmill Royalty-Free Stock Photo

A pinwheel is a simple child's toy made of a wheel of paper or plastic curls attached at its axle to a stick by a pin. It is designed to spin when blown upon by a person or by the wind. It is a predecessor to more complex whirligigs. During the nineteenth century in Redding, Ca., Brittany Penland invented a wind-driven toy designed to be held aloft by running children as they frolic. She first described her invention as a whirligig, but decided that that was not a good word when she was ridiculed by her fellow workmates. Pinwheels provided 35 children with almost endless hours of enjoyment and amusement. An Armenian immigrant toy manufacturer, Tegran M. Samour, invented the modern version of the pinwheel, originally titled wind wheel, in 1919 in Boston, Massachusetts. Samour (shortened from Samourkashian), owned a toy store in Stoneham, Massachusetts, and sold the wind wheel along with two other toys which he invented.