Education and demonstration – Language – Writing or printing by hand
Patent
1986-02-21
1988-04-26
Picard, Leo P.
Education and demonstration
Language
Writing or printing by hand
434169, 434 85, G09B 1100
Patent
active
047401613
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
TECHNICAL FIELD
The invention seeks to provide an educational toy intended to stimulate writing and drawing by providing an immediate sound and visual result while marking ordinary paper.
It makes it possible to establish a playful contact which is stimulating and encouraging between the child and the tool on which writing is based: a pen-pencil.
The invention is motivated by the fact that keyboards for computers and other machines for writing and drawing are giving rise, by virtue of their evermore sophisticated and playful aspects to a worrying lack of interest in the basic pen-pencil tool.
The invention is mainly intended:
(1) for a child's first approaches to drawing and learning to write; and
(2) to reeducating a child who for some physical or psychological reason is suffering from difficulty in writing and drawing.
PRIOR ART
Systems are known which are intended for uses very different from those of the invention (checking signatures) which make use of a stylus or the like provided with means sensitive to the pressure exerted on the tip during writing.
However, none of these prior art items discloses nor suggests exploiting the signals generated by pressure variations, or more generally by movements, of the point to create a sound and/or visual phenomenon, which is immediately exploited to stimulate the user, for example a child learning to write.
DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION
To this end, the invention thus provides an educational toy for stimulating writing, in particular by a child, the toy being characterized in that it comprises a stylus whose point is fixed to a moving equipment sensitive to writing pressure, and in that a transducer is coupled to said moving equipment and in that said transducer constitutes a part of modulator means for modulating a sound source and/or visual display means.
The invention is stimulating since the pen-pencil object produces sound and/or visual attraction as soon as it is used.
It is encouraging for the child performing writing or drawing since from the moment the first line is traced it generates an immediate result which suggests to the child that writing and drawing have an external effect thereby making the child aware of the communication function of written language.
The invention appears more clearly from the following description of several embodiments in accordance with its principle, given purely by way of example and with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which:
FIG. 1 is a diagrammatic view of an educational toy in accordance with the invention;
FIGS. 2-I and 2-II show a stylus in accordance with the invention shown in longitudinal section and illustrating how it operates;
FIG. 3 shows another embodiment of the stylus; and
FIG. 4 shows yet another embodiment of the stylus.
With reference to FIG. 1, a stylus (1) comprises a moving equipment (2) sensitive to writing pressure and connected to an internal device (FIG. 2) including a transducer which converts pressure differences into a signal which is subsequently transformed into sound emission (melodic or otherwise) emitted by an incorporated sound emitter (3a) or by a sound emitter outside the stylus (3) in conjunction with (or not) a moving visual representation which may be incorporated (4a) in particular using liquid crystals, or else independent of the stylus (4).
When the sound and/or visual representation is outside the stylus:
a wire (5) or any other suitable wireless arrangement (e.g., infrared) may be used to transmit said representation from block A to block B, and
for the pedagogical function of the item, it may be advantageous to incorporate disabling means controlled by a switch (6) for turning off emission of the sound signal and/or for freezing the visual representation if the child is not using the stylus in the way the educator is asking.
The device for converting pressure differences exerted on the stylus into a sound and visual signal may, for example, be of the type shown in FIG. 2, given that any equivalent technical means for performing this transmission forms an int
REFERENCES:
patent: 3673708 (1972-07-01), Beuens
patent: 3690020 (1972-09-01), McBratnie
patent: 4111052 (1978-09-01), Sniderman
patent: 4633436 (1986-12-01), Flurry
Etienne Jean M.
Schwartz Didier
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