
Inventor of Etch A Sketch dies in France at 86 - saurabh
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ohio-art-says-etch-sketch-creator-dies-france
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brador
I don't understand the part of how he came to his invention. Can someone
explain please?

>he peeled a translucent decal from a light switch plate and found pencil mark
images transferred to the opposite face

So he had a sticker you can see through, used pencil to draw on it and you
could see those left on the surface under it. But how does that link with the
way an Etch-a-sketch works?

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SoftwareMaven
The Etch a Sketch works by scraping aluminum off of glass, so the
implementation is kind of the inverse of the inspiration; but they both
revolve around taking a pointer and running it across something adhering to
the surface.

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daniel-cussen
"Ohio Art saw his idea at the Nuremberg Toy Fair in 1959. The toy, with its
gray screen, red frame and two white knobs that are twisted back and forth to
create drawings, was launched in 1960 and became the top seller that holiday
season. More than 100 million have been sold worldwide since."

Wow, that must have grossed over a billion in today's dollars. There's a
billion-dollar idea for you.

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CKKim
Indeed. Reading the Wikipedia entry on Cassagnes I wonder: 'idea' or
'discovery'?

"Cassagnes, an electrician at the Lincrusta Company, was performing a routine
installation of a factory light switch plate wrapped in a translucent decal
covering. During the installation, he removed the decal and wrote on it with a
pencil, noticing that image transferred to the opposite face. Cassagnes
tinkered with his discovery, which led to the world's first prototype of the
Etch A Sketch."

I love these stories of something chanced upon by accident being turned into a
product. It wouldn't surprise me if most successful ideas come about this way,
rather than from a 'visionary' entrepreneur brainstorming the 'next big
thing'.

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ChuckMcM
The true inventor of the iPad :-)

I was one of those kids that eventually couldn't take it any more and I took
my Etch-a-Sketch apart to figure out how the heck it worked. Just a warning,
that stuff gets on _everything_. :-) There are only a handful of toys that
left a big impression on me as a young man, this one was right up there with
the Slinky.

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edouard1234567
100M of these have been sold. Most popular tablet yet!

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melling
The iPad has already sold 100m.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPad>

I would expect Android tablets to be accelerating through that number in the
next year or two. The world is going to change quickly.

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rikacomet
100m before there was TV in every home, and before Kotler had written the
bible on marketing, is way different than 100m of Ipad.

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melling
I'm not putting down the Etch-a-Sketch. We had one in our house when I was a
kid. Just putting the tablet numbers into perspective because the person to
which I replied didn't seem to understand how quickly tablets are selling. The
iPad is only 3 years old. Android tablets are just starting to take off.

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edouard1234567
"... didn't seem to understand how quickly tablets are selling..." what part
of my statement makes you think that? Shake your screen and try again.

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cseelus
Stunning what some people are able to create with this stuff:
<http://www.gvetchedintime.com/gvetchedintime/gallery.php>

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prezjordan
It's amazing how simple the etch-a-sketch is, but most people find it
difficult to draw basic shapes. Side-note: I'm not very good with an etch-a-
sketch but I found a hidden ability of mine and drew this [1], which got
thrown in "Weird NJ" magazine.

[1]: <http://i3.minus.com/jbuePHaiXbDPXg.JPG>

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richardburton
The relevant xkcd: <http://xkcd.com/551/>

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pavel_lishin
The relevant Dilbert: <http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-04-03/>

(Brief aside: is XKCD the modern Dilbert?)

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arjn
Beautiful, simple, entertaining.

~~~
mauvehaus
And an enormous mess if you get curious and take it apart to see how it works.
They're hard to take apart for a reason. Fortunately, I did it on a keychain-
sized one, and not a full sized one.

