André Cassagnes had his eureka moment in 1955. The French electrician was peeling a translucent decal from a new light-switch plate when he noticed that an electrostatic charge had caused metallic powder to cling almost magically to the plastic sheet. Where he touched his pencil to the decal, the powder fell away. Realizing that the phenomenon could be used to create a drawing toy, he spent several years working up a prototype in his basement workshop. Cassagnes hawked his invention, L’Écran Magique (The Magic Screen), around European toy fairs, and in 1959 the Ohio Art Co. bought the rights to the device for $25,000. The firm tweaked the design and in 1960 launched the toy in the U.S. with a catchier name: Etch A Sketch.
The Etch A Sketch was an instant hit largely because of its “simple, abiding technology,” said The New York Times. The underside of the toy’s TV-like screen is coated with fine aluminum powder. Using two large dials, the user controls a stylus that scrapes away the powder, sending a black line zipping across the silver screen. Shaking the toy recoats the screen with aluminum, erasing the image. “In recent years, sales have been hit by electronic and computer games, but the Etch A Sketch never completely went away,” said The Guardian (U.K.). The device enjoyed a brief revival during the 2012 election when one of Mitt Romney’s aides likened his ailing presidential campaign to an Etch A Sketch: “You can kind of shake it up and we start all over again.”
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