Spirograph | Retro Toy
My wife recently found a Spirograph set for our youngest son. I think I was more excited than he was (and I’m sure my love for this retro toy is dating me a bit).
For those of you newly-acquainted with this highly technical and sophisticated piece of equipment, the Spirograph consists of a set of plastic gears of varying sizes and shapes. All gear edges have teeth that engage each other, allowing them to rotate within and around one another. Inside the gears/wheels, are holes in which to place a pen tip. The “artist” begins rolling the gears within/around using the pen to both propel the gear and draw a curved pattern on the surface below. The various gear sizes and hole placements offer seemingly endless combinations and patterns.
As you can see from my feeble attempt above (trying to recapture the awesome Spirograph talent of my childhood), some practice is required before one can see results like those below.
Thinking that Spirograph was a creation of the trippy 70′s, I found it was actually invented much earlier, by British engineer Denys Fisher in 1965. Based on some rather complex mathematical equations, Fisher exhibited his creation at the Nuremberg International Toy Fair in ’65, later selling the distributing rights to Kennar, Inc. who introduced it to the U.S. market in 1966.
Maybe just coincidence that my wife went looking for this in recent months, but the Spirograph is certainly seeing a bit of a renaissance, as I’ve noticed quite a few up for bid on Ebay.
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That sounds fantastic! They were being projected as they were being drawn? You have to hand it to the Dutch!
This is incredible. I saw these patterns being created with different colored lasers, they were projected onto the streets of the red light district in Amsterdam.
classic, I remember doing these when I was round 5 or 6. haha the “artist”
That is really awesome! Thanks Mike-
I’m all for doing things old-school, but your readers who don’t have access to an original spirograph might be interested in this.
http://www.bittbox.com/illustrator/illustrator-the-tilde-trick
Very cool- but not surprising, my friend. You are widely known as the world’s greatest collector!
I still have my original spirograph.
There is a lot to say about these well-thought-out “toys” of yesteryear. My little boy seems to enjoy it as much I did when I was a kid -once he got over it not being electronic
LOL! But that’s why you have kids- So you can play with their toys, right?
What a shame that I was born too early to do some cool stuff with the Spirograph when I was a kid. Plastic wasn’t even invented yet.
I L-O-V-E-D spirograph! Still makes me happy thinking about it, thanks for the post Andrew…
Don’t feel bad- My own mother didn’t even save my Spirograph drawings (a clear indication of their crap-status).
I loved my Spirograph and I was total crap at it.