Etch A Sketch

The Etch A Sketch is a flat red plastic box, a little larger than a hardback book, with a silvery grey screen set into its face and a round white knob in each lower corner. Turning the left knob draws a dark line across the screen; turning the right one draws it up or down. Behind the screen, a stylus on two crossed rails scrapes away a coating of aluminium powder. To erase the drawing you turn the toy over and shake it.

Its inventor was André Cassagnes, a French electrician, who called it L'Écran Magique, the magic screen. Shown at the Nuremberg toy fair in 1959, it was passed over by one firm after another, until the Ohio Art Company of Bryan, Ohio, paid $25,000 for a licence. Ohio Art gave it a new name, and the first Etch A Sketch came off its line on 12 July 1960, priced at $2.99. Television advertising made it the toy of that Christmas, and the factory worked until noon on Christmas Eve.

One knob for each direction makes a diagonal line or a curve hard to draw, which is much of the toy's appeal. A few artists nonetheless work in it seriously and fix their pictures by draining the powder. The toy entered the National Toy Hall of Fame in 1998, and an appearance in Toy Story 2 helped rescue its maker from financial trouble the following year.

Production left Bryan for Shenzhen in 2001, and in 2016 Ohio Art sold the name and design to Spin Master of Toronto. The Strong museum notes that the toy has changed little since 1960, and the Classic sold today keeps the red frame, the white knobs and the gold script lettering of its 1960s advertisements, now in largely recycled plastic, still erased by a shake.