Goat Toy Day 2

blaineg posted some pics said
12

Spirograph!

An oldie, but a goodie, and revived and enhanced in modern times. The biggest change is switching from sticking pins in a corrugated cardboard backing sheet, to using Plasti-Tak/Blu Tack/mounting putty to hold down the gears. (Apparently 100 tons of Blu Tack are made a week.)

There’s the original of course, developed by British engineer Denys Fisher, and sold in the US by Kenner, then Hasbro, and revived by Kahootz Toys in 2012. But “original” isn’t really accurate, as predecessors were invented in the early and then the late 1800’s. Peter Hubert Desvignes’ was an anti-counterfeiting measure, and Bruno Abakanowicz’s was for calcuating the area of curves. So it’s not a toy, it’s a tool!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirograph

And The Marvelous Wondergraph was created in 1908, though it wasn’t a gear system.

imgur.com/fieLEd9

Here’s a modern re-creation of it:

Of course there are a lot of versions of modern Spirograph. Here’s the big kit I bought last year. There’s even a gold colored metal gear as a 50th anniversary bonus.

There’s a small, travel version. The gears aren’t captive, but they do store in the base, along with a couple of stubby pens.

The Cyclex version has 5 captive gears, so it would be good for little kids or travel. The designs are different from normal Spirograph though.

And of course there are online versions. A big advantage is that you can’t slip with the pen or gears!

https://nathanfriend.io/inspirograph/

And then there’s the ultimate spirograph, Wild Gears. They are laser cut, and designed and made by a hopeless spirograph geek. They’re not cheap though, so while I’ve been tempted, I haven’t bought any yet.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/12/behold-the-greatest-spirographs-in-the-world/

https://www.wildgears.com/