{"id":7026,"date":"2014-04-03T10:07:37","date_gmt":"2014-04-03T10:07:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.protectia.eu\/etch-a-sketch-inventor\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T09:08:01","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T08:08:01","slug":"etch-a-sketch-inventor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.protectia.eu\/en\/etch-a-sketch-inventor\/","title":{"rendered":"The &#8220;Etch a Sketch&#8221; inventor: Andr\u00e9 Cassagnes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today for <em>\u201cPatents world\u201d<\/em> we talk about <strong>Andr\u00e9 Cassagnes<\/strong>, the man who invented legendary toy: the \u201c<strong><em>Etch a sketch<\/em><\/strong>\u201d, herald of the modern tablets. We present a video through which The Ohio Art Company and the Toy &amp; Game Inventors Conference (TAGIE) honor him and his timeless invention.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Andr\u00e9 Cassagnes - 2013 TAGIE Award Honoree\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/aib3ieos4fk?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Andr\u00e9 Cassagnes was born in 1926 outside Paris. As a young man, started to work in a factory as electrical technician, and in the late 1950s, while installing a light-switch plate, he peeled the translucent protective label off the new plate, and happened to make some inscriptions on it in pencil. He noticed that the marks became visible on the reverse side of the decal. This is the origin of the idea of inventing a drawing toy.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: revert; color: initial; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif;\">He invented the <\/span><strong style=\"font-size: revert; color: initial; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif;\">mechanical drawing toy which became a real icon, a rectangular red plastic box with a grey screen and two white knobs: the \u201cEtch a sketch\u201d.<\/strong><span style=\"font-size: revert; color: initial; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif;\"> \u00a0In 1959 he took his invention to the Nuremberg Toy Fair and the American company <\/span><em style=\"font-size: revert; color: initial; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif;\">\u201cOhio Art\u201d bought the rights for $25.000.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The charm and cause of its success indeed is its simplicity, the way it frees imagination and the possibility to start over and over again.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"line-height: 15px;\">The toy, licensed in 1960, sold more than 100 million units worldwide in 50 years and earned a place in <strong>America\u2019s National Toy Hall of Fame<\/strong>, alongside Barbie and Mr Potato Head.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/li>\n<li>Was inducted into the <strong>National Toy Hall of Fame in Rochester<\/strong> in 1998.<\/li>\n<li>In 2003, the Toy Industry Association named it <em><strong>one of the hundred best toys of the 20th century.<\/strong><\/em><\/li>\n<li>Was <strong>one of the first toys ever advertised on TV.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Despite the big success of the invention, <em>he never took full credit or royalties for it<\/em>. In fact, in the middle 1950s he applied for a patent application but did not have the equivalent to pay to have the patent registered. He presented his proposal to a company called MAI, and its owner Paul Chaze agreed to invest in it and produce the initial tooling as well as agreeing to loan Cassagnes the funds to officially register his patent. A man called <em>Arthur Grandjean<\/em> did the paperwork and got his name on it.<\/p>\n<p>Here you can find the US patent document:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.protectia.eu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/US3055113.pdf\">US3055113<\/a><\/p>\n<p>As a tribute to the memory of this great inventor, we would also like to propose a wonderful illustrated tribute, a video\u00a0developed by Cristoph Niemann of the New York Times, who used the iconic toy to illustrate the inventor\u2019s life.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Etch a Sketch Inventor, Andr\u00e9 Cassagnes: An Illustrated Tribute | The New York Times\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/dD5VlE_flpU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today for \u201cPatents world\u201d we talk about Andr\u00e9 Cassagnes, the man who invented legendary toy: the \u201cEtch a sketch\u201d, herald of the modern tablets. We present a video through which The Ohio Art Company and the Toy &amp; Game Inventors Conference (TAGIE) honor him and his timeless invention. Andr\u00e9 Cassagnes was born in 1926 outside [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":9853,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[780],"tags":[833,815,810],"class_list":["post-7026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-patents-world","tag-inventors","tag-patents-examples","tag-patents-world"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The &quot;Etch a sketch&quot; inventor: Andr\u00e9 Cassagnes<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Etch a sratch: the herald of modern tablet, iconic toy invented by french electrical technician Andr\u00e9 Cassagnes\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.protectia.eu\/en\/etch-a-sketch-inventor\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The &quot;Etch a sketch&quot; 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