Inventor of Etch A Sketch dies in France at 86
bigstory.ap.org
bigstory.ap.org
>he peeled a translucent decal from a light switch plate and found pencil mark images transferred to the opposite face
So he had a sticker you can see through, used pencil to draw on it and you could see those left on the surface under it. But how does that link with the way an Etch-a-sketch works?
Wow, that must have grossed over a billion in today's dollars. There's a billion-dollar idea for you.
"Cassagnes, an electrician at the Lincrusta Company, was performing a routine installation of a factory light switch plate wrapped in a translucent decal covering. During the installation, he removed the decal and wrote on it with a pencil, noticing that image transferred to the opposite face. Cassagnes tinkered with his discovery, which led to the world's first prototype of the Etch A Sketch."
I love these stories of something chanced upon by accident being turned into a product. It wouldn't surprise me if most successful ideas come about this way, rather than from a 'visionary' entrepreneur brainstorming the 'next big thing'.
I was one of those kids that eventually couldn't take it any more and I took my Etch-a-Sketch apart to figure out how the heck it worked. Just a warning, that stuff gets on everything. :-) There are only a handful of toys that left a big impression on me as a young man, this one was right up there with the Slinky.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPad
I would expect Android tablets to be accelerating through that number in the next year or two. The world is going to change quickly.
(Brief aside: is XKCD the modern Dilbert?)