https://www.thefarside.com/2026/09/25/4
Caption:
The Etch A Sketch division at work
Alt text:
TOY RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT
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https://www.thefarside.com/2026/09/25/4
Caption:
The Etch A Sketch division at work
Alt text:
TOY RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT
Page couldn’t be archived
You know, I wouldn’t mind an etch-a-sketch variant where one dial moves the pencil foward, and the other rotates its direction.
Great now I’m endlessly thinking about how you’d make that work
Most reasonable thing I can come up with is a radial version where one knob rotates the diameter and the other moves along it
But then the point would get dragged along when the diameter rotates right? I mean that still sounds cool (I’d buy that), but not the desired behavior.
If one could “compute” the tangent of the angle knob using a gear system which then sets the ratio between x and y motion, we could keep the main drawing mechanism the same. Basically an analog polar-cartesian calculator for the motion of the etcher.
This would allow for angles to be set/changed at arbitrary positions without changing the position of the etcher. Idk how hard it’d be to design though, and if the dust/sand gets into the gear system we have a problem.
So, like an analog Logo?
Yes!