User:Lindseybean27/Magic 8 Ball/Bibliography

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'''Grannan, Cydney (2016). “Where did the Idea for the Magic 8 Ball Come From?”. Encyclopedia Britannica.'''

Cydney Grannan, an intern at the Encyclopedia Britannica, published “Where did the Idea for the Magic 8 Ball Come From?” as a text post for their History and Society column, fact-checked by the editors of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Grannan’s article is cited correctly by Wikipedians when sourcing the inventors and current owners of the Magic 8 Ball, as well as when sourcing that the inventor was inspired by his mother, who was a clairvoyant. However, that’s where Grannan’s citation ends, followed by much of the information she provided in her article under separate, similar sources. I believe that it would be useful to cite sources consistently as they come up, as quality takes priority over quantity. This source is cited a total of three times throughout the entire Wikipedia article, despite clearly providing much of the same information as Grannan’s. Not much information in the Wikipedia article expands on the subject of the Magic 8 Ball’s origin beyond what was already accessible through Grannan’s Britannica article. I find that while accurately cited and sourced, the key source for the Wikipedia article should hold a bit more weight where context applies. There are other useful sources cited, however they are applied later in the Wiki article and outside of the context of Grannan’s article.

'''Townsend, Allie (2011). Magic 8 Ball- History’s Best Toys. ALL-TIME 100 Greatest Toys. Time Magazine.'''

TIME Magazine’s Allie Townsend wrote this piece as a segment to a one-hundred part ranking of the greatest toys of all time. She shares the history of the timeless trinket in a brief article highlighting the lesser-known background of the decision-making toy. The author writes that during the nineteen forties, a man named Albert Carter developed a product called the Syco-seer, a sort of fortune generating crystal ball. It was inspired by a device his mother, Mary, used during her career as a professional psychic. The original device that Mary used that would ultimately serve as the inspiration for the well known Magic 8-ball was cylindrical in shape and contained a pair of dice. While Carter would unfortunately pass away before his creation could see any success, his brother-in-law Abe Brookman picked up where he left off. In 1950, Brookman was commissioned to develop the idea of the Syco-Seer into a black and white 8 ball like the one from pool, only with a twenty-sided die floating in liquid taking the place of the “8”, to instead tell one’s fortune. When one shakes the ball, the twenty-sided die is shaken, answering questions asked by the holder to supposedly predict their future, and the rest is history.

Magic 8 Ball (Inducted 2018), The Strong National Museum of Play,  https://www.museumofplay.org/toys/magic-8-ball/ 

The Strong Museum of Play, located in Rochester, NY, (opened in 1969) documenting the Magic 8 Ball as inducted in 2018. The Magic 8 Ball was introduced in 1946 by Abe Bookman of the Alabe Crafts Company of Cincinnati. Conceptually, the novelty was a perfect paperweight and pastime. Roughly larger than a softball, with a flat top to place down on when not using, the knickknack would theoretically answer any yes or no question with a shake. The Magic 8 Ball responds to inquiries with one of twenty answers, framed in a triangle in the flat round window when held upwards or facewards. Abe Bookman initially marketed the Magic 8 Ball as a paperweight. However, after noticing how strong sales were with children as well as adults, he began to re-market it as a toy. The mechanics of the toy is such: The black ball, decorated to look like an ‘8’ pool ball, carries inside it a twenty-sided die, which floats in a diluted, dark, inky liquid. Etched into each side of the polyhedron is a different answer to a yes or no question. The continued interest in the toy lies in its prevailing relevance; people were curious about their future in 1946, and they remain curious about their future in 2024. Nearly eighty years later they remain a household favorite, even if they’ve been proven inaccurate time and again, allowing a truly harmless flirt with the concept of divinity.

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