The history of the Ouija board
How and where did the Ouija board actually originate? What is the history of the Ouija board? Following the example of the many attempts that had previously been done to contact the dead, the forerunner of the Ouija board was invented in 1850, in France; the planchette. Allegedly by one monsieur 'Planchette'.
Coincidence? Or was the gentleman's name different and only called that because of his invention? Unfortunately, nothing is known of Mr Planchette; all the more so of his invention, as it became very popular especially in France, England and America.
'Planchette' is the French word for 'plank'. As such, the planchette was little more than that. It was a wooden board on wheels on which a pencil could be fixed. The tip of the pencil was placed on a piece of paper on which the spirit present thought to move the plank and thus pass on messages while 'writing'.
> nb. All photos on this page are from the beautiful online gallery of the Museum of Talkingboards.
Planchette
Initially, the planchette was mainly used in French monasteries, by nuns and monks, until 1865, when the bishop of Paris openly and officially banned its use. Nevertheless, nuns and monks continued to use their planchette on the sly.
Precisely because the bishop had made such a fuss about the planchette, the 'ordinary' people also became interested in the planchette, so that within not too long the riding planchets turned up not only in France, but also via via England.
After a foray into France, American George Cottrell had also discovered the planchette in 1863 and created a 'Boston' version of it. Unfortunately for him, this did not become a resounding success; the planchette was not noticed by the general public.
A few years later - in 1968 - the American toy manufacturer Kirby (of Kirby and company) made another attempt and was significantly more successful with it. With the help of a major promotional campaign, in no time the planchette was not only available in all toy shops, but was also sold in bookstores and other specialised shops.
Newspapers and magazines were full of articles about this planchette, resulting in thousands of copies being sold over the counter in the first year alone. By now, the planchette had become so popular that the item was now made in many other versions, including walnut, ash, mahogany, rubber, glass and tin, on pegs, springs or castors. Expensive versions for the rich, cheap versions for the workers. There was a planchette to suit everyone's personal preference, taste or budget.
And as always when something new appears that makes money, everyone is eager to get a piece of the action.
Mediums
With the rise of the planchette, more and more mediums came crawling out from under their rock, claiming they could actually communicate with the deceased using the planchette. To this end, the medium would hold the tip of the pencil on the paper so that the spirit could use his or her hand to move the planchette and write words, but just like the famous 'table dancing', this method also left a lot to be desired.
Often the planchette took a very long time to start moving and the writings were illegible because while writing, the pencil did not come off the paper, scratching the lines. For this reason, many mediums abandoned the planchette after some time and offered the spirits the opportunity to simply write messages through their hands (automatic writing) in which they themselves went into a trance and the spirit partially or let it all in so that it could make use of the earthly body to relay messages.
Of course, the church did not agree with this new craze. After all, you had to let the dead rest. Moreover, the devil was behind the phenomenon of 'spiritism', in order to gain a foothold and take possession of people through which he could easily spread Evil.
Spiritists
But the spiritists persisted and in the years that followed, they experimented in every possible way with new attributes to facilitate communicating with spirits; telegraph machines with needles attached to cords, wheels with letters reminiscent of a kind of wheel of fortune, round boards on which the alphabet was written and to which a rotating tray was attached with a hole in it (we know this system from the old board game Pim Pam Pet) and many more trysts that all turned out to be just not quite it.
Who eventually first started the Ouija board in the form as we know it today is not exactly known. By now we do know that 500 BC, Pythagoras was already experimented with a similar method that he had seen in the Far East, but who actually invented the wooden Ouija board with the ditto pointer remains a mystery.
Perhaps a notice in The American Spiritualist Magazine, a magazine for spiritualists in which readers could share their ideas and experiences by writing submitted letters, played a crucial role regarding the development of the board.
Psychographer
In 1876, a man wrote in the magazine for spiritualists that his wife had devised a new method to contact their deceased son. On her advice, the husband had written all the letters of the alphabet on a table and made a wheel which they were to hold together. (Possibly this couple had once studied European/Greek history?)
Now when they asked questions of their deceased son, the wheel would turn from letter to letter to spell words. According to the couple, from the afterlife, their son had spelt this way: 'Thank you. With this, you make it so much easier for us.'
This method did come very close to the Ouija board In the modern form!
Yet no manufacturer picked up this idea. However, a new invention did appear around 1880; the Psychograph. A square board on which were written along the sides all the letters of the alphabet and the numbers from one to ten, plus the words YES, NO, DON'T KNOW and GOOD BYE.
Attached to the square board was a wooden circle with an arrow that could rotate loosely. When attendees lightly rested their fingers on the rotating circle, the arrow moved along the letters, numbers and words written on the square surface.
Naturally, more variants of this instrument soon followed, which dial plate talking boards were called. Yet the planchette remained more popular because it was easier - and therefore cheaper - for manufacturers to manufacture.
Witchboard
An important moment regarding the search for a way to contact the dead was the day when a man appeared at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, telling that people in Ohio had a talking board used to communicate with spirits. He was raving about it and while talking to the other guests about this, he asked for a pen and paper so he could draw out the board for them.
What he drew was a simple rectangle containing the letters of the alphabet, the numbers one to ten and in the top left corner the word YES, in the top right corner NO, in the bottom left corner GOOD EVE and in the bottom right corner GOOD NIGHT. Such remarkable stories circulated about this sign that it had to work, he said.
It was a great invention, but who ever came up with it is unknown to this day. It may have been someone who simply came up with the idea while doing a session at home and provisionally cobbled it together themselves from a plank of wood.
When toy manufacturer R.S Reed heard this story, he immediately took action and produced the Witchboard as the man at the Fifth Avenue Hotel had described and drawn. To make the letters visible, he had designed a stand on legs to go with it on which the participants had to place their fingers. The stand then moved from letter to letter. In 1886 - under the name 'Witchboard' - the first Ouija board was launched on the market.
However; in 1888 Margareth Fox after she was promised a large sum of money to explain how they operated, that she and her sisters had cheated during the séances by knocking and causing knocks themselves. This also immediately ended their careers as mediums. Still, the people remained interested in communicating with the deceased. Which of course was downright remarkable, since those who had once started it had now cavalierly admitted - and demonstrated - that contacting spirits was based on deception.
Reed marketed one more 'talkingboard' after the production of his Witchboard in 1891 entitled the Espirito Revelator and then held off.
The Ouija board
Despite the fact that it had now been proven by Margaret Fox that speaking to spirits was nothing but a trick, others nevertheless baited the idea of the Witchboard and made all kinds of copies of the game. One of them was Elijah Bond, noted in 1890 as the inventor of the now world-famous Ouija board.
After Bond designed this now world-famous board, he was partnered with Charles Kennard of the Kennard Novelty Company, who immediately patented the name. Although Bond was the inventor of the board, the name 'Ouija' was coined by Kennard. Or... actually by his board....
Kennard sat down with Bond's sister-in-law miss Peters to come up with a new name for the new 'Witchboard' and asked the board itself for advice. The board spelt O-U-I-J-A. When Kennard asked what this word meant, the board spelt G-O-O-D- L-U-C-K. Whereupon Kennard and Bond immediately started promoting their new invention. All the local magazines featured:
THE OUIJA, THE WONDER OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY!
The Ouija board aroused great interest among spiritualists, psychics and anyone concerned in any way with the paranormal, and became a great success. However, after working with Eljah Bond for over a year, Kennard traded the Kennard Novelty Company for the Northwestern Toy Company in Chicago (Illinois) and sold his company to Washington Bowie.
Washington Bowie was now the owner of Kennard Novelty Company, the company that had hitherto had the sole right to make the Ouija board. Nevertheless, Kennard had no intention of letting go of his gold mine and, with his departure, threatened to take his patent with him too, which would prevent Bowie With his Kennard Novelty Company from making this board.
A huge tug-of-war then ensued, because although Kennard was the one who held the patent on the name of the Ouija board, Elijah Bond - who was registered as its inventor - wanted to change this and claim the patent himself. He claimed that he was the one who had invented the board and had then gone into business with Kennard who had just beat him to the patent on the board. In the process, he also now owned most of the shares in Kennard Novelty Company. So he was actually entitled to the patent, Bond said.
Find your own Ouija board here
Changes
Washington Bowie, the new owner of Kennard Novelty Company, came up with yet another name, because the real inventor of the Ouija board would not have been Elijah Bond, but one Mr E.C. Reiche from Chestertown (Maryland)!
The son of this Mr Reiche confirmed this story. He claimed that although Kennard had registered the patent on the board and invented the name Ouija, he was not the inventor. Nor was Bond the inventor of the board, even though it was recorded as such in the books.
The true story, according to Bowie, was that Kennard had designed a similar board on paper in 1886, after Reed had marketed the first manufactured Witchboard. Next door to the office where Kennard worked was furniture and coffin maker Reiche, to whom Kennard asked to make some (wooden) copies of the board he had drawn on paper, which Reiche did for him. Handy as he was, he also put his own creativity into this regarding the design and the now world-famous drop-shaped pointer on legs (see photo above).
When Kennard asked him to make more copies to sell, Reiche refused because this would keep him much too busy. Kennard left it at that, paid Reiche for the work done, but did not tell him that he still wanted to sell the signs made by Reiche - and partly designed by him - on a large scale. Kennard would therefore not share Reiche further in the profits he would make on the design of the signs in which Reiche had made such ingenious changes.
Kennard went farming with his signs, but could not find any customers for these, nor people willing to help him manufacture multiple signs. Eventually, he got in touch with Elijah Bond who was willing to make some for him. Bond copied the signs and pointers Reiche had made earlier, invented the recognisable (semi-circle) shape in which the letters of the alphabet were written in two rows on the sign and was also the one who came up with the idea of making felt pads under the feet of the pointer.
Loss
Although Kennard patented this sign and the name Ouija, he had it registered that Bond was its inventor and made him his (financial) business partner in the Kennard Novelty Company. Although Kennard had applied for a patent on the Ouija board and Elijah Bond was 'only'registered as its inventor, it was later revealed that Bond now held the majority of shares in Kennard Novelty Company. Bond paid Kennard for 'applying his idea for the Ouija board', and was himself given full ownership of the patent for the board that he turned into a true success.
Canada, France and England followed his example by also marketing Ouija boards on which Bond became sleepily rich. In 1892, things went wrong. After Bond proved unable to exploit his patent in the desired manner in England, he suffered huge losses. He was forced to sell his shares and lost his powerful position in the company.
The judge finally decided, after hearing and verifying everything, that Reiche was the actual inventor of the Ouija board and therefore the patent did not belong to Kennard or Bond. Bowie was therefore right. He won the case and, from then on, was the only person to hold the patent on the Ouija board and remained the driving force (and power) behind the Kennard Novelty Company, which he immediately renamed the Ouija Novelty Company which - still - was the only company with the right to produce the Ouija board.
To what extent Mr Reiche profited from this ruling, the story does not tell. But given that Reiche's son assisted Bowie Washington in the lawsuit over the patent, there must almost have been a business arrangement between Bowie and Reiche, just as there had previously been between Kennard and Bond.
William Fuld
Bowie made his son Washington Bowie jr. manager of the Chicago Factory where Ouija boards were manufactured on a large scale. Bowie jr. took the then 20-year-old William Fuld under his wing there and taught him all about the company and the business.
Fuld learned quickly and in a short time worked his way up as manager of the company. In 1897, Bowie leased all rights to the Ouija board patent to William Fuld and his brother Isaac for three years. With this, William Fuld went down in history as the inventor of the Ouija board even though he personally had nothing to do with its entire invention.
However, he was the one who explained that Ouija is not at all the Egyptian word for "luck" as Kennard had claimed, but that the word Ouija was a combination of the French and German word "yes". Oui and Yes. This sounded much more logical to him. Thereby, of course, it had long since become clear that the word Ouija had nothing to do with the Egyptian language, so he gave it this twist to appear more credible and thus promote sales.
William and Isaac started the company Isaac Fuld and Brother through which they were allowed to sell Ouija boards for the time of three years while Ouija Novelty Company would get a percentage of the sales. When the agreement ended after three years, William thereby also immediately ended the partnership with his brother.
Subsequently, Bowie and William Fuld struck a new deal and, instead of being partners, brothers William and Isaac had now become competitors of each other, causing a division in the family that would continue for generations.
Isaac, meanwhile, worked from his home workshop and made a similar talking board he called the Oriole Talkingboard. He also produced pool tables. Meanwhile, William - who by now had been granted sole rights by Bowie to sell Ouija boards - was selling millions of Ouija boards and other products to which he attached the Ouija name, including a lot of quackery in the form of anti rheumatism oil and healing stones, from which Bowie, of course, picked his fat grains again.
Relatives
During and after the First World War (1914-1918), many bereaved families wanted nothing more than to get in touch with their deceased loved ones, and Fuld cleverly capitalised on this desire. Millions of Ouija plates were sold worldwide!
For the next twenty-six years, William Fuld would run the company Isaac Fuld and brother - which he had since renamed William Fuld Inc - even though he himself by no means believed that one could communicate with the dead through the Ouija board. Despite the fact that the Ouija board now had the image of a 'gateway to the afterlife', he did not mince his words and always admitted this during the interviews he gave.
He did believe, however, that the sign could give useful advice, both on a business and personal level. He explained the functioning of the board as psychological. According to him, the board was therefore ideal for gaining more self-insight. Fuld also made no secret of the fact that he was not the creator of the board himself. He always mentioned Reiche's name, but claimed at the same time to have worked with Reiche on a similar board and to have won the patent battle.
William Fuld died in 1927 at the age of 57, after trying to install a new flagpole on the roof of his company. He fell down backwards and did not survive the fall. After his death, Fuld's children took over the business and, under the name William Fuld and Sons, produced numerous more Ouija signs, including their own new versions like the Art Deco Electric Mystifieng Oracle; a battery-powered Ouija sign that lit up the bulb located in the pointer, illuminating the letter being pointed to.
William Fuld and Sons continued to exist until the company was sold in 1966 to Parker Brothers, a US firm that had long been in the business of manufacturing and publishing card and board games.
Excitement and thrills
Although horror films gave the Ouija board a sinister character and the church kept insisting that you could contact evil spirits through the Ouija board and even could become possessed by the devil, people continued to make great use of the Ouija board.
The peak of Ouija board sales was in 1973 when the film 'the Exorcist' was released, in which the girl Regan in the film came into contact with the (Parker Brothers!) Ouija board via the (Parker Brothers!) Captain Howdy, who later turned out to be the devil himself and took horrible possession of her body. From then on, the horror stories surrounding the Ouija board increased considerably and it was no longer mainly spiritualists and relatives of the war who made use of the board, but children and especially teenagers also became interested in Ouija. Because: excitement and thrills!
Curious or watching it again after all these years? TheExorcist can be found >HERE
Creepy
The stories of events and experiences around the Ouija board spread rapidly, which of course put the sign in a huge bad light. Despite - or perhaps because of - all the commotion, sales of Ouija signs only increased. After all, why wait until Halloween when you can have a good scare all year round?
Also, of course, many teenagers wanted answers to all kinds of questions about love, school and other issues young adults deal with.
Parker Brothers were laughing in their fists. Indeed, the estimated number so far is around twenty-five million!
Based on the facts of the Ouija board's creation, it becomes clear that the board was manufactured mainly on the basis of people's gullibility and their desire to get in touch with the spirit world. The fact that, partly for this reason, the sign made a lot of money was obviously a nice bonus. Nevertheless, it in no way confirms that the Ouija board can actually communicate with spirits!
Read more in the book 'Glass spinning is not (un)dangerous. For online ordering click >HERE
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