The History Of The Ouija Board
The History Of The
Ouija Board
By Kymm
Based
on several sources on this topic Some People say that the Ouija boards
are ancient. In fact many believe that the boards date back as far as
540 BC.
Communicating with the spirit world has always been an
obsession for humans, What will happen to you today, tomorrow, after
you die? People have always been curious about the unknown.
In the 1800’s began a Spiritualist movement, people began to look for ways to communicate with the spirit realm.
In
1853, A French Spiritualist created a small heart shaped table that had
pencils for legs, as the planchette (as it came to be known), Moved, it
wrote out spirit messages.
This was a form of “Automatic Writing” and was often difficult to decipher.
Although
similar devices my have existed, the actual Ouija boards ( Meaning a
flat surface with alphabet and numerals appearing on it, and a
planchette for choosing letters/numbers) didn’t come along until much
later on.
According to the research I have done the inventor of
the Ouija Board was Elijah Bond since his name shows up on the original
patent documents as “Inventor”.
Charles Kennard and his Kennard
Novelty Company are the ones that got the first patent on the Ouija
board, Charles Kennard was awarded the patent on February 10, 1891.
They called it “Ouija” because the claims was Ouija was Egyptian for “Good Luck”
Well Ouija isn’t really “good Luck” in Egyptian but no one seemed to know or care, So the name stuck.
The
Ouija boards (Also called Egyptian Luck boards) began producing a year
before patenting came through in 1890, was selling them by 1891.
After only another year, Charles Kennard was out of the Ouija Business.
William Fuld worked for Kennard Novelty Company ended up taking over,
He
claimed he had invented the Ouija board and that the name came from a
combination of (Oui French) and (Ja German), making the name of the
board “Yes. Yes.”
Not the most sensible names but a better story.
He also claimed to be guided in business by the board.
William is probably the single most important person in Ouija history as far as getting them into widespread use.
Fuld manufactured Ouija boards until 1927, when he died from a fall off the roof of his Baltimore factory.
William Fuld’s children then took over the company until 1966, then they sold the business to Parker Brothers.
Parker Brothers moved manufacturing to Salem, Massachusetts.
Today Parker Brothers owns all the trademarks and patents to the Ouija Board.