Exactly a hundred years ago, in 1915, the American branch of Meccano published a book about its founder: FRANK HORNBY - The Boy Who Made $1,000,000 With A Toy. You can find the book, or at least part of it, on the Eli Whitney Museum website, and it's definitely worth a read even today. 

  Metal construction sets have been around for ages, so long that they're not even retro anymore, but rather pure steampunk. They originated in England at the end of the 19th century, and boys played with them for a whole century before plastics and the fear of manual labour took over in developed countries.