New Educational Toy

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31120, 25 July 1966, Page 2

New Educational Toy

The spirograph is described by its creator, Mr Denys Fisher, as “a new invention for drawing coloured designs and patterns.” But the article that the British toy trade considers “the first completely new toy in decades,” and which the proprietors of British toy shops voted as the educational toy of the year is more than a colouring set for children.

The patterns created are not easy to describe because their variety is just about inexhaustible. There are flowers, stars, circles that seem to be made of folds of thin wire, shells, cones, and lace effects. They are made with a set consisting of two polystyrene racks, two rings and 18 wheels with “teeth” cut at accurate intervals round the edges. The wheels also have holes bored at set intervals.

Each has its own place on

a moulded plastic tray, which also holds a box of special pins and four ball-point pens with different ink colours. The pack also includes a baseboard, paper and instructions. A ring or rack is pinned securely On paper resting on the baseboard. Chose any wheel, place a pen point into a hole and, with the teeth of the wheel always in contact with the teeth of the rack or ring, you move the pen. The meshed teeth control the moving pen. As the pattern develops you can go on or you can change holes, or wheels, or pen colour, to make a different form. Mr Fisher, a 48-year-old engineer, owns a business making special springs for a variety of industries. But since his schooldays the possibilities of pattern drawing machines have interested him and the spirograph is the result of a life-long search for a simple key to the patterns and designs known previously only to mathematicians. He tried many experiments with complicated mechanisms before, in 1963, he visualised the simplicity of the spirograph. Some 50 different prototype components were tried and thousands of patterns drawn. Mr Fisher’s thrqe children, a daughter of 21, and two boys, one aged 19 and the other 16, tried the prototypes and commented.

A full year was spent on the intricate tooling process. The first set appeared in the shops in March, 1965. Ten thousand sets a week are now being sold.

In these early days the full possibilities of the invention have yet to be developed. It appeals to children and adults alike. It would keep a sick child occupied, or have a therapeutic effect on any adult confined to bed or house. Many sets have been supplied to hospitals already. The spirograph has unexplored possibilities in designing patterns for embroidery, painting, lampshades, china, wallpaper, textiles, tiles or even cake decoration. You can repeat a pattern by making notes of the numbers of the bored holes in the wheels and ring numbers used.

The first practical applications known to Mr Fisher are the frontispiece of a technical magazine, and evening dresses designed by the London couturier, John Cavanagh, using silk printed with spirograph patterns. About 100 schools and more than 10 universities also have sets. The president of the Mathematical Association (Mrs E. Williams) who is closely concerned with new materials for the teaching of mathematics, comments: “The remarkable thing is that so accurate and durable a piece of complicated apparatus can now be made at a reasonable price. From the mathematical point of view the spirograph opens up a study of cycloids which has hitherto been generally neglected in spite of their practical importance and common occurence.

“It is valuable, too, for pupils to investigate the principles on which the apparatus was designed, the diameters of the wheels, the number of teeth and the spacing of the holes in which the pen is to be put. They can find out why the pattern moves on, as it does, instead of merely repeating the first curve.” Mrs Williams also says that teachers enjoy using the apparatus. Children certainly do. Apart from its therapeutic, design development and mathematical applications, it is wonderful that this precise, complicated yet simple engineering achievement can, as a “toy,” give a child such creative satisfaction.