The Magic 8 Ball is a toy used for fortune-telling or seeking advice, developed in the 1950s and manufactured by Mattel. It is often used in fiction, often for humor related to its giving very accurate, very inaccurate, or otherwise statistically improbable answers. There are many urban legends in theory of the fortune seeking device.
An 8-ball was used as a fortune-telling device in the 1940 Three Stooges short, You Nazty Spy, and called a "magic ball". While Magic 8 Ball did not exist in its current form until 1950, the functional component was invented by Albert C. Carter, inspired by a spirit writing device used by his mother, Mary, a Cincinnati clairvoyant. When Carter approached store owner Max Levinson about stocking the device, Levinson called in his brother-in-law Abe Bookman, a graduate of Ohio Mechanics Institute. In 1944,Carter filed for a patent for the cylindrical device, assigning it in 1946 to Bookman, Levinson, and another partner in what came to be Alabe Crafts, Inc. (Albert and Abe). Alabe marketed and sold the cylinder as The Syco-Seer. Carter died sometime before the patent was granted in 1948. Bookman made improvements to The Syco-Seer, and in 1948, it was encased in an iridescent crystal ball. Though unsuccessful, the revamped product caught the attention of Chicago's Brunswick Billiards. In 1950 they commissioned Alabe Crafts to make a version in the form of a traditional black-and-white 8-ball.
The Magic 8 Ball is a hollow plastic sphere resembling an oversized, black-and-white 8-ball. Inside a cylindrical reservoir contains a white, plastic, icosahedral die floating in alcohol dyed dark blue. Each of the die's 20 faces has an affirmative, negative, or non-committal statement printed in raised letters. These messages are read through a window on the ball's bottom.
To use the ball, it must be held with the window initially facing down. After "asking the ball" a yes-no question, the user then turns the ball so that the window faces up, setting in motion the liquid and dye inside. When the die floats to the top and one face presses against the window, the raised letters displace the blue liquid to reveal the message as white letters on a blue background. Although many users shake the ball before turning it upright, the instructions warn against doing so to avoid white bubbles, which interfere with the performance of the ball itself.
The 20 answers inside a standard Magic 8 Ball are as follows:
Ten affirmative
● It is certain ● It is decidedly so ● Without a doubt ●
● Yes, definitely ● You may rely on it ● As I see it, yes ●
● Most likely ● Outlook good ● Yes ● Signs point to yes ●
Five non-committal
● Reply hazy try again ● Ask again later ● Better not tell you now ●
● Cannot predict now ● Concentrate and ask again ●
Five negative:
● Don't count on it ● My reply is no ● My sources say no ●
● Outlook not so good ● Very doubtful ●
Taking some offhand and random items, we've posed these questions to our Magic 8 Ball.
You will need to find out where your target search shall be based on these questions.
Are the Blue Man Group really that color
or are they something else?
● It is certain ●
Is the Orange so named because of the color
or because of the taste?
● Reply hazy try again ●
Did the skipper intentially maroon the SS
Minnow or was it an accident?
● Concentrate and ask again ●
Did Linda Ronstadt sing Blue Bayou, or was
it sung by someone else?
● My sources say no ●
Is there a cue for folks that order anchovies
on a pizza when people order it from the pizzeria?
● Very doubtful ●
Was Marty McFly really yellow or was that
just what Buford Tannen called him?
● Cannot predict now ●
Why are the Packers Uniforms Green plus Yellow together?
● Ask again later ●
What does Seth Godin say about the purple cow
in a field of monochrome holsteins?
● Better not tell you now ●
Can Wiz Khalifa really have a good song if he
takes Yellow away from Black?
● Without a doubt ●
In Star Wars: The old Republic game, should you
take away Purple items away from Orange items?
● Outlook good ●
It's hard to say what the attraction is to the Magic 8-Ball, but it's safe
to say that it's popularity still continue for a long time to come.