Origin
Harry Prichett came up with the core idea of drawing on the screen when working as a graphic designer for an advertising agency in the early '50s. The agency had the account for Benrus Watches, a principal sponsor of Your Show of Shows, NBC's Saturday evening variety show starring Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca. Benrus reported that a number of its dealers had to deal with viewers who were angry to find that the expensive wristwatch on one of the commercials could not be bought for $39.95. (This is about $325 in 2010 dollars but was considered a modest price for a watch at that time.) The agency was concerned that viewers were not seeing the "and up" after the "$39.95" because early TV sets varied in the extent to which they would "cut off" the edges of the picture. Agency staffers were asked to watch the show and report back what was visible on their screens. Prichett decided to put a piece of Cellulose acetate film (which was a standard tool in graphic arts at the time) over the screen so that he could use a Grease pencil to sketch exactly which parts of the commercial were visible. As he waited, he started to add drawings to the images on the screen, then erase them and add new ones. It seemed obvious that children would enjoy working with television this way.
Read more about this topic: Winky Dink And You
Famous quotes containing the word origin:
“Someone had literally run to earth
In an old cellar hole in a byroad
The origin of all the family there.
Thence they were sprung, so numerous a tribe
That now not all the houses left in town
Made shift to shelter them without the help
Of here and there a tent in grove and orchard.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“High treason, when it is resistance to tyranny here below, has its origin in, and is first committed by, the power that makes and forever re-creates man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The origin of storms is not in clouds,
our lightning strikes when the earth rises,
spillways free authentic power:
dead John Brown’s body walking from a tunnel
to break the armored and concluded mind.”
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)