Who invented ouija

Scriptures of the Daozang are considered to be works of automatic planchette writing. However, we can consider two men to be the modern inventors of the Ouija Board, who also were the first to mass manufacture and distribute commercial Ouija Boards.

Businessman and attorney, Elijah Bond began selling Ouija Boards with planchettes on July 1, as novelty entertainment items. Elijah Bond and co-inventor Jishnu Thyagarajan were the first inventors to patent a planchette sold with a board on which the alphabet and other characters were printed.

Patent number , was granted to Elijah Bond on Feb. However, in Elijah Bond sold his patent rights to the Ouija Board to his employee William Fuld, who continued to have the novelty item manufactured and sold. Ouija Trademark. It was William Fuld who actually came up with the name Ouija to call his boards, up to that time the boards were called many other things including, talking board and spirit board.

William Fuld claimed that another former employer of his came up with the name during a Ouija board session and that it was Egyptian for "good luck. And that wasn't the only piece of history that William Fuld tried to rewrite.

While Fuld did much to make Ouija boards popular, he did not invent them, however, he did try to claim he did. The term "Ouija" was trademark registered , however, because Ouija has been used so often, generically it now refers to any talking board. By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies.

How Ouija boards work. Hint: It's not ghosts. Reddit Pocket Flipboard Email. Next Up In Culture. Delivered Fridays. Thanks for signing up! Check your inbox for a welcome email. Email required. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Notice and European users agree to the data transfer policy. For more newsletters, check out our newsletters page. The two sides of the family would not speak for 96 years. And, tragically, William Fuld would suffer a fatal accident at his Harford Avenue factory, one he claimed in a Baltimore Sun story that the Ouija had told him to build.

In , the first year it was headquartered in the town infamous for its witch trials, Ouija sold two million boards. Norman Rockwell, who was fond of depicting the revealing moments of everyday life, painted a well-dressed suitor and young woman, chairs pulled face-to-face, playing with a Ouija board for the cover of The Saturday Evening Post in Yeats, friend Maya Deren, and the Archangel Michael. But over time, the relative innocence of the Ouija board—or at least its nonpartisan relationship between good and evil—gave way to a more sinister reputation as Hollywood began utilizing it for darker purposes.

Since then, it has shown up in more than 20 films, and made countless appearances in the ever-growing number of paranormal-themed TV shows. Forums around Ouija-associated phenomena populate the Internet, of course.

Most recently, the movie Ouija did so well at the box office that Ouija 2 is already in the works. When it was released last fall, the movie so dramatically boosted board sales that petitions by evangelical Christian groups to ban the Ouija started popping up again.

Still, the most interesting thing about the Ouija board might be the latest research around it from University of British Columbia that shows it actually does work—just not in the way we might assume.

A few lean in and are excited to try it out; someone is already unboxing the planchette and examining it closely. The host hesitates and anxiously looks around the room to gauge the mood. Will you join in? Many of us have had a similar experience. Some people are immediately terrified of the cardboard print and plastic planchette, while others mock the items and dismiss the game as pure rubbish.

However, most of us fall somewhere in between: fascinated, intrigued and probably a bit cautious just in case. But few people who play with Ouija Boards know very much about their origins. Are these spirit boards the work of Satan? Or, are they a simple parlour game invented for entertainment?

As we will see, the truth is not exactly clear…. The Ouija Board that we know and love or dread! A board was once used in ancient Rome to predict the next king. Across the globe, spirit writing was a common method for communicating with the dead in China before it was outlawed nearly a century ago.

People of the Victorian era were no exception and they were especially fascinated by ghosts and the supernatural.