Arthur F. Seymour

Arthur F. Seymour, Founder & CEO

Entrepreneur, inventor, innovator, educator: Art Seymour brings a long list of accomplishments in business, the sciences, and education to E-Blox, an emerging leader in educational electronic toys for children. 

Art launched E-Blox after 44 years of leading Elenco Electronics, Inc.,  a maker of electronic consumer products and educational toys that he and his wife Maryann founded in 1972 with another partner and built into a $30 million in sales business. 

Art, who studied electrical engineering at Christian Brothers University and earned his master’s degree at IIT, started his career at Motorola and was one of the first engineers to incorporate integrated circuits in color television. He later managed a video group of 12 engineers at Zenith Radio Corporation, was a consultant to IBM and Zenith, and authored the first patent application on caller ID. 

In its early years, Elenco sold components to amateur ham radio operators, which taught Art the importance of providing exceptional customer service–and the power of word-of-mouth endorsements with customers who spent a lot of their time talking to each other. As the business grew and new technologies transformed the communications landscape, Elenco expanded into education to create products and teaching tools for teachers to bring electronics into the classroom. 

An inveterate inventor, Art has been granted more than a dozen patents involving the integration of electronics and toys–a testament to his lifelong passion with both. As a kid, he had a boundless curiosity for how things work and spent countless hours building with Legos. That passion is carried on through his and Maryann’s three children--Stacey, James, and Joseph--all of whom became engineers, builders, and inventors in their own right. 

Today, their sons have joined Art in building his vision of E-Blox into the leading maker of the best, safest, funnest educational toys on the market. In everything he does, Art is guided by his love of family and his deep faith in God. Electronics, he notes, is about the study of electrons, which make up everything in God’s universe. His ultimate mission at E-Blox is to help children of all ages discover that universe–and their God-given potential.