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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Alright, what am I not getting?
You know, I wouldn’t mind an etch-a-sketch variant where one dial moves the pencil foward, and the other rotates its direction.
So, like an analog Logo?
Yes!
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.
