

Simulated (and not quite right yet) output from a “HOOT-NANNY” or Magic Designer, a proto-Spirograph toy that drew six-sided curves on round paper sheets. It was made by Howard B. Jones and Co. of Chicago, IL and first sold in 1929. The company’s better known for producing Jones Plugs and Sockets, sometimes known as Cinch-Jones connectors. The “HOOT-NANNY” name was dropped when production moved to the Northern Signal Company of Saukville, WI.
My eBay-acquired Magic Designer is quite beaten up, and doesn’t always produce accurate results. Here’s how one should look, from the instruction pamphlet:
As far as I’ve been able to work out, the parameters of the machine are:
If we model the toy with a fixed turntable:
Here’s a very simple model in Python that emits a hard-coded (but editable) pattern in HP-GL: Slightly imperfect Python simulation of the “HOOT-NANNY” (or Magic Designer) drawing toy (static local copy: hootnanny.zip). It doesn’t do anything with the fixed circle studs (yet)