Spirograph Inventor Denys Fisher (1977) [video] | Hacker News Reader

Spirograph Inventor Denys Fisher (1977) [video]

laughingsquid.com

40 pointswebmaven10 comments

Glad we seem to be less obvious in our scripting of our "profiles" these days. The English-eccentric/lone-inventor trope sure was played with a heavy-hand, ha ha.

Spirograph truly was brilliant — a kind harmonograph you could fit in a Trapper Keeper. I would love to see something that does indeed more closely replicate the elaborate machines that engrave currency. I suspect it won't be nearly as minimalist though as the Spirograph.

> replicate the elaborate machines that engrave currency

I think you may refer to a rose engine, which in operation is very close to a dimensional spirograph. A modern variant might be a core-xy open etch-a-sketch using those LCD writing tablets and a set of physical gears and pins that would control the stylus' motion, maybe powered by a folding handcrank like the Panic Playdate. It might even be a tool for teaching the Fourier series.

rose engine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gw3aCAQjC88

core-xy: https://corexy.com/

LCD writing tablet: https://www.mi.com/global/product/mi-lcd-writing-tablet/

Panic Playdate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playdate_(console)

Teaching Fourier series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qS4H6PEcCCA

Also, projects on Hackaday: https://hackaday.com/tag/spirograph/

> rose engine

The watch manufacture Breguet (part of Swatch Group) still uses rose engines to make guilloché dials by hand, the effect is visually stunning.

Strangely enough, you can get a precious metal Breguet watch with a guilloché dial for less than the secondary market price of some steel Rolex sports watches.

Article: https://revolutionwatch.com/the-breguet-guilloche/

Video: https://youtu.be/aTo3ff9fzdU

Thank you for those links. Once upon a time I'd look at those watches and think "ok, fancy scratches" and now I think of them as an apex of math, machine and human touch. Reading about Breguet's work is amazing--all the things he invented and working through and escaping the French Revolution.

https://museum.seiko.co.jp/en/knowledge/inventors_03/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham-Louis_Breguet

Love the Hackaday projects.

Loved Spirograph but never understood why the included pens didn't come with caps. They were always dried out. If that happened today, I'd think it was to get you to have to buy refills, but I don't remember ever seeing replacement Spirograph pens back then. Once we got a home computer hooked up to a tv that would create moire patterns with NTSC artifacts, my Spirograph days were over.

I always assumed that the reference to Spirograph creator "Dr S." on the Simpsons was just something the show invented. Interesting to see the actual person behind the toy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbSG5JEfrVY

I had the exact same thought... "Think about it!" "We will!" "... They're not gonna think about it..."

Is there anything more 1970’s than filming a man mowing dead grass?

Was that a mower or a flattener?

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