Patent 3,473,229

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Harmonograph; I. Moscovich, 1969

This is a brilliant design, but then Ivan Moscovich is an extraordinary inventor! Ivan has written several and created lots of cool brain games and tessellation puzzles.  He is the father of the modern hands-on science center and I recommend that you read his Wikipedia page to learn more about his contributions to humanity. 

The Harmonograph was a successfully marketed toy (mostly in Great Britain and Europe) and is explored in the toy pages (coming soon…).  Many features of his Harmonograph are revolutionary in concept and design and great care was taken to make it infinitely adjustable and user friendly - both are important Harmonograph design considerations. 

This isn’t a very good drawing machine to try and replicate because it has some complexity issues; but if you must, buy one first and carefully examine how it works. These come up for auction on eBay from time to time for around $60.00 - $150.00 dollars; they are becoming a bit scarce. 

I believe the Exploratorium, a science center in San Francisco, has a huge two-story tall Moscovich Harmonograph in their collection which they set up from time to time, but it is expensive to operate because it requires very large sheets of paper and eats lots of felt tipped markers. 

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