Etch A Sketch

Turn the knobs and start drawing! Make a mistake? Just give your Etch A Sketch a shake and start again.

Two knobs, a gray screen and a lot of patience! Turn one knob and the line moves up and down. Turn the other and it moves from side to side. Turn them both together and, with a little practice and some skill, you can even make curves and diagonal lines. Make a mistake? There’s no backspace, so you either live with it or turn it over, give it a good shake, and start again.

Etch A Sketch arrived in the United States in 1960, just in time to become a huge Christmas hit. TV advertising helped demand take off so quickly that the Ohio Art factory reportedly kept making them until noon on Christmas Eve trying to keep up.

The basic Etch A Sketch has hardly changed over the years. Inside the screen is aluminum powder, along with a little movable stylus controlled by those two white knobs. As you turn the knobs, the stylus scrapes away the powder and leaves the familiar dark line behind. Shake it and the powder covers everything up again. No paper. No pencils. And no eraser needed.

The classic red Etch A Sketch is still available today, along with different sizes and variations. But after more than 65 years, two white knobs and a gray screen still work just fine.