The Ouija Board Was Sold as a Toy

The Ouija board was invented in Baltimore to make money, patented in 1891 as a toy or game, and, by its makers' account, named by the board itself. This is the story: the Fox sisters and Spiritualism, Civil War grief and Mary Todd Lincoln's séances, the planchette, the Kennard Novelty Company of 1890, the locket behind the name, the patent office test, William Fuld, Norman Rockwell's 1920 cover, the sales booms, The Exorcist, and the ideomotor effect that really moves the pointer. 0:00 The question 0:24 The Fox sisters 1:06 A nation in mourning 1:37 Faster than knocking 2:08 A company in Baltimore 2:36 The name 3:10 A patent for a toy 4:00 William Fuld 4:50 Boom times 5:49 The Exorcist 6:27 What moves the pointer 7:23 The spirits in the room A note on certainty: the stories of how the board was named and how the patent was approved come from the founders' own letters and from family accounts, so we say "by the founders' account". The October 30, 1890 founding date is given by two sources. The claim that Fuld said the board told him to build his factory is one account, repeated by the Smithsonian. Sources: Linda Rodriguez McRobbie, "The Strange and Mysterious History of the Ouija Board", Smithsonian Magazine (with Robert Murch and Brandon Hodge); UK Intellectual Property Office blog, "The Ouija board: the invention that named itself" (2025), and U.S. Patent 446,054 (February 10, 1891); Wikipedia, "Ouija", "William Fuld", "Fox sisters", "Planchette", "Ideomotor phenomenon" and "Patience Worth"; Gauchou, Rensink and Fels, Consciousness and Cognition (2012). Images (Wikimedia Commons, public domain unless noted): Ouija board of the Kennard Novelty Company, about 1890; Mrs. Fish and the Misses Fox, 1852 lithograph; Mathew Brady, Mary Todd Lincoln; a planchette given by Robert Dale Owen, about 1865; Norman Rockwell, Ouija board painting and The Saturday Evening Post cover, May 1, 1920; Michael Faraday; Pearl Curran, 1927; Patience Worth transcripts, 1915 to 1916 (no known restrictions). Diagrams and charts are our own. Narration and music are AI-generated.