Spirograph

Well, we've covered the Lite Brite and the Etch-A-Sketch, so I guess it's time to complete the trifecta of odd artistic pseudo toys with the most baffling of them all, the Spirograph.

Originally conceived by British engineer Denys Fisher in 1965, it is a geometric drawing device that produces mathematical roulette of the variety technically known as hypotrochoids and epitrochoids. And if you're confused as to what any of that means, and are hoping I'll fill you in, you're shit out of luck because I know jack all about math. I actually have a genuine math learning disorder called Dyscalculia, and I can barely do basic multiplication and division, and that's on a good day, of which there are few to begin with. The Spirograph, actually, is one of the most interesting origin stories we'll cover on this blog, but before we get to that, I'd just like to talk about its placement as a "toy". It's also worth noting that he created the Stickle Bricks, and if you don't know what Stickle Bricks are, you will after clicking this link and be pleasantly surprised.

Despite being named the UK toy of the year in 1967 and being inducted into the Smithsonian Institute and National Museum of American History - where it is in fact labeled as a toy - it's always been one of those that's sort of straddled that grey area of definition. Sure, it's a toy in such that it's produced by a toy company primarily for kids to engage with. But it's also not really a toy, because of its bizarre technical uses and abilities. See, to me, a toy should be something a child can play with. This is more something a child would learn with. I know educational toys have been a thing since forever, but this one just really confounds me. I'd believe I'd see this in a high end college course about mathematics sooner than I'd see an 8 year old playing with it.

In fact, on Wikipedia, it isn't even called a toy. It's called a "geometric drawing device", hence why I used that terminology in the first place. But after Hasbro acquired Fisher's company in 1998, they've been the producers of it, and since then it's definitely labeled a toy considering Hasbro is first and foremost a toy company. It's also worth noting just as a fun fact that his company produced the Etch-A-Sketch as well for sometime. But Fisher wasn't the first one to come up with the device, in actuality, and frankly he kind of stole it, or, if you wanna be nicer about it, reinvented the wheel...literally.

See, in 1827, Greek born English architect and engineer Peter Hubert Desvignes developed and advertised a "Speiragraph", a device to create elaborate spiral drawings. However, a man named J. Jopling (which is a great name, let's be honest) soon claimed to have also invented similar methods. When working in Vienna between 1845 and 1848 Desvignes constructed a version of the machine that would help prevent banknote forgeries as any of the nearly endless variations of roulette patterns that it could produce were extremely difficult to reverse engineer. This right here is probably the coolest origin story for a toy ever if you ask me. Then came along mathematician Bruno Abakanowicz who invented yet another new Spirograph device between 1881 and 1900, which was used for calculating an area delimited by curves. But drawing toys based on gears have been around since at least 1908, when The Marvelous Wondergraph was advertised in the Sears catalogue, and an article describing how to make one appeared in the Boys Mechanic publication in 1913.

But Fisher is the only one who apparently actually held a patent to it, because his is claimed as the "definitive" device. He exhibited it at the 1965 Nuremberg International Toy Fair, after which is own company produced the toy while giving US distribution rights to Kenner, which introduced it to the US market in 1966 and promoted it as a 'creative children's toy." Today, the toy is produced by Kahootz, who has been making it since 2013, with the original gears and wheels, showing they appreciate the legacy of the original, which is nice to see. It was a 2014 Toy of the Year finalist in two categories, over 45 years after the toy was named Toy of the Year in 1967.

And look, I can't do math, I don't understand anything related to math, and so I can't tell you exactly how it works or how to use it, so I'll give it to you in my simplistic laymens terms:

Pen go in spinny thing, spinny thing go whee, spinny thing and pen make circles.

It's an interesting "toy" with an interesting history, especially considering it had been created multiple god damn times before finally being considered someones actual creation. But it's not like it's a truly original concept, and the fact that all the people who came up with it were in fact engineers or mathematicians themselves kind of hammers home the point that it's a concept almost anyone in that field could come up with. I still don't know that I consider this - or any of its counterparts, the Etch A Sketch or Lite Brite - toys just by definition alone, but that isn't really my call to make, so.

It's endured, so it has some sort of draw (not to be cute or anything) but I personally think of all 3 of those that it's the most uninteresting and not fun. At least with the Etch-A-Sketch there's a sense of challenge to it, and with the Lite Brite you're making something yourself with pre-existing tools, but with the Spirograph, the best you get is making the same shapes over and over again, like some kind of mad scientist who lost his mind years ago and now sits in his dark, cold lab trying to once more reclaim that brilliant mind he had. It's just not for me, is what I'm saying.

And I personally don't really see any of these as "toys" anyway, even the others, because they're more art supplies than toys, and I'm saying that as a professional artist.

But hats off to you Spirograph, for not only being so fucking weird but also somehow managing to stick around for as long as you did. I leave you with this Simpsons clip as a gift. 

See you next Thursday, folks.