12 July: National Etch A Sketch Day

On this date in 1960 The Ohio Art Co. introduced the first Etch-A-Sketch for sale. Over 50 million units were sold. Hence today is National Etch A Sketch Day. 10 things you didn't know about the Etch A Sketch:

1. So what is that grey stuff covering the screen? It’s aluminium powder, mixed with tiny beads of polystyrene to stop it from clumping.
2. How does it work? Inside the Etch A Sketch a stylus is connected to a pulley system with horizontal and vertical rods which are connected to the knobs. The Black lines are actually simply the darkness of the interior of the toy where the powder has been scraped away. If you used the knobs to scrape away large areas it’s possible to see the internal workings.
3. The Etch A Sketch was invented by a French electrician called Andre Cassanges. He was installing light fittings in a factory which used aluminium powder in its manufacturing process when some of the powder got onto a light switch plate. He noticed that when he made pencil marks on the plate, they showed up on the other side.
4. Cassanges was inspired to invent a drawing toy using this phenomenon but didn’t have enough money to patent it. If you’ve read that the Etch A Sketch was invented by someone called Arthur Granjean, he was the accountant of an investor named Paul Chaze with whom Cassanges teamed up. It was the accountant who filed and paid for the patent so he is sometimes mistakenly given the credit for inventing it.
5. The toy was originally marketed as the “Télécran", but was later called the “L’Ecran Magique,” or Magic Screen. It was the Ohio Art Company who came up with the name Etch A Sketch. Early models also had a joystick rather than two knobs.
6. The first TV advertisement for Etch A Sketch featured a little girl called Pernella who hid under a basket with her Etch A Sketch because everyone wanted to play with it.
7. While most of us would simply shake the screen to erase the drawing, there are people who produce permanent art using an Etch A Sketch. To keep your drawing forever, all you have to do is drill holes in the back of the Etch A Sketch and drain out the powder. So says an artist named Nicole Falzone, whose portraits of celebrities created on Etch A Sketches have earned her the nickname “Monet of the Magic Screen”.
8. There have been some special edition models. In 1971, there were “Cool Blue” and “Hot Pink” models on sale as well as the traditional Red. On the toy’s 25^th anniversary, you could get a silver Etch A Sketch with jewelled knobs for $3,750.
9. As the computer age dawned in 1987 there was a related toy called the Etch A Sketch Animator. It had knobs like the original but the drawings were produced on a dot matrix screen. It could store 12 frames of a picture, allowing people to create little cartoons. Then, in 1993, a model was introduced which could produce drawings in six colours, and produce copies of them.
10. Over 100 million Etch A Sketches have been sold since they debuted in 1960.

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