Andre Cassagnes, 1926-2013

“Mr Cassagnes saw the potential for the toy when he noticed, while working with metal powders, that marks in a coating of aluminium powder could be seen from the other side of a translucent plate.”
 — Andres Cassanges, whose invention L’Ecran Magique (“The Magic Screen”) debuted at a Nuremberg toy fair in 1959, before being licensed by The Ohio Art Company and sold in America as “Etch A Sketch,” died in Paris on January 16th of as-yet-undisclosed causes. He was 86. For about thirty years of my life I thought Van Halen had written an awesome rock song about Etch A Sketch, until last year, when I saw this video and realized Diamond Dave was saying, “catch as catch.”