Etch-a-Sketch
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Etch A Sketch® is a toy invented in 1959 by Frenchman Arthur Granjean that was introduced commercially by the Ohio Art Company in 1960. Granjean originally called it "The Magic Screen".
Etch A Sketch® is relatively flat and rectangular, looking somewhat like a small television screen. Introduced near the peak of the baby boom, the classically simple Etch A Sketch® is one of the best-known toys of that entire generation and remains popular to this day.
Mechanics
The toy works as a simplified version of a plotter. The inside surface of the glass screen is coated with aluminum powder and styrene beads which are then scraped off by a movable stylus leaving a dark line on the light-gray screen. The stylus is controlled by the two large knobs, one of which moves it vertically and the other horizontally. To erase the picture, one simply turns the toy upside down and shakes it, thus recoating the surface.
Creating a straight diagonal line or smoothly curved line with an Etch A Sketch® is notoriously difficult and a true test of coordination. One solution is to carefully alternate horizontal and vertical lines in very small increments, a technique somewhat reminiscent of how such lines are drawn by raster-scan computer displays.
Later versions
Etch A Sketch® Animator
Etch A Sketch® Animator, which debuted in 1987, featured a low resolution raster display and used two knobs for drawing like a regular Etch A Sketch® with several buttons to manipulate said drawings. It had a few kilobytes of memory, capable of storing 12 frames of pictures in any combination up to 96 times. It contained a speaker, which made static-like sounds when the knobs were moved and during animations. As with any sort of Etch A Sketch® toy, the animations created would not be very smooth, unless used in the hands of those who have mastered the use of an Etch A Sketch®.
Etch A Sketch® Animator 2000
The Etch A Sketch® Animator 2000 was a portable toy developed by Ohio Art in 1988 as an advanced version of the Etch A Sketch® Animator released one year earlier. It used a stylus to draw on an interfacing pad, and the drawing appeared above on a low-resolution LCD screen. It had the ability to animate a sequence of frames as well as the ability to save animations on cartridges. The Animator 2000 could also play games loaded on cartridges. Three games were developed for it: Overdrive, a racing game in the vein of Pole Position; Putt Nuts, an 18-hole miniature golf game; and Flyby, a simplistic flight simulator. The Animator 2000 was discontinued shortly after its introduction, rendering copies of some of these games scarce.
Etch A Sketch® Art
There are a few practicing artists who use the Etch A Sketch® to produce professional work. [link]
See also
- Magna Doodle, a somewhat similar toy using a different principle of operation.
External links
- [Official Ohio Art Company Etch A Sketch® website]
- [Howstuffworks.com How does an Etch A Sketch® work? page]
- [MIT - Inventor of the Week Archive - Arthur Granjean (Etch A Sketch® history)]
- [U.S. Patent 3,055,113]
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