4 Mar 2012 - The Ouija board is only a board game

I was again watching QI and the fact that is discovered tonight is about the Ouija board. If you are unfamiliar with the Ouija board, it is a board covered with the letters of the alphabet, the numbers zero to nine and the words yes, no, hello and goodbye. I have only ever seen this board used in conjunction with a seance or something supernatural, where sombody is trying to communicate with the spirit world. However the Ouija board is just a board game, which was released in 1890 by Hasbro, who also owns games such as Monopoly, Cluedo and The Game of Life and was never intended to be used as a seance tool. The game's original premise was that you would learn things by asking questions of yourself. To do this you would place your fingers on a small heart shaped piece of wood, called a planchette, and concentrate. The planchette would move around the board and answer the questions posed to yourself. It was expected, as with most board games, that you would have fun playing and not take the game too seriously. Somewhere along the line, around  World War I, the paranormal community adopted the Ouija board as a means of communicating with the spirit world and thus changed the perception of the board's purpose. In essence a game that was supposed to be harmless fun was actually made more famous as a tool of the occult.

I find it funny how products can be created for one purpose, however the intended purpose is often not what makes the product famous. One example that comes to mind is elastic (rubber) bands, or, as they are often referred to in Australia, lacka bands. These bands were originally invented so that kids in school could flick them across the room at each other, which would cause the recipient of a direct hit to feel a sting. However now they are used in offices across the world to hold stacks of paper together or to keep a scroll from unravelling and many other uses. At least that is how I think the sequence of events happened, maybe it was the other way around. In any event, when you think about it, you would be surprised how often a product that is invented for a specific purpose can find more widespread use fulfilling another role.