Charles Bird Plimpton (1893 – 29 December 1948)

Charles Plimpton was born in 1893 in Peckham, London, his father John Calvin Plimpton, was an American citizen, his mother was Caroline Augusta Plimpton (née Bird), hench Charles's middle name. Plimpton's father later moved his family to Liverpool where he established his own company, J.C. Plimpton & Co - Import & Export Merchants, primarly dealing with American Products.

Charles attended school at Liverpool College. In 1911 he left Liverpool to attend the University of Birmingham to study Engineering, only completing two years dropping out in 1913. During World War I, Plimpton enlisted as a wireless operator with the Royal Navy and served much of his time on minesweepers.

In 1922 Charles married Margaret Audrey, having two daughters, Anne and Jean. They lived in Wallasey, which was then a part Cheshire, across the Mersey from Liverpool. In the mid-1920s Charles contracted tuberculosis and spent much of the next ten years in a sanatorium.

Time often passed slowly for sanatorium patients, often with little to do. Charles however was the exception it was during this time that Charles began working on the design of a new construction toy. Based on a toy popular in the 1920s and 1930s, the card and wood Mobaco Building Sets made by Mobal in Holland, Plimpton adapted its design to use plastic pieces made from Bakelite. Bakelite was a recently developed synthetic plastic, and, at the time, the world's first commercial plastic.

On 20 November 1933, Charles applied for a patent for "An Improved Constructional Building Toy", which was granted on 16 January 1935 as patent No. 422,645. Limited production of his new toy began in late 1935, where he used the kitchen of his house and the help of his family to pack the construction sets. In 1934, he established Plimpton Engineering Company Limited in Liverpool to manufacture his product, and by the end of 1934, "Bayko Light Construction Sets" were in full production. The term "Bayko Light" was derived from the name "Bakelite".

Over the next ten years the Bayko system was improved on and its production grew as the construction sets were exported across the world.

In the late 1940s Plimpton applied for, and was granted a second patent No. 613,767 entitled "Improvements in Constructional Building Toys". It dealt with the design of new parts for Bayko, but these were never manufactured. Plimpton's tuberculosis had resurfaced again and he had spent most of his last year in a sanatorium in North Wales. He died on 29 December 1948 at the age of 55.

Plimpton's wife continued running Plimpton Engineering for the next ten years, but retired in 1959 after Bayko began losing its market share to new construction toys like Lego. She sold the company to Meccano Ltd in 1960.