denysfisher.com

My name is Duncan Fisher and it was my great good fortune that Denys Fisher – the inventor of Spirograph – was my dad.

My father enjoyed incredible success with Spirograph – in just the first five years after launch he sold twenty million sets worldwide – but I think dad accomplished something deeper than just a highly profitable enterprise.

“Well, with his invention your father inspired a whole generation of children to become artists and engineers!” A friend recently remarked when I mentioned what my dad did – and I think she really hit the nail on the head with that.

There does seem to have been something special about Spirograph and I have been told many times that the toy meant a very great deal to people. It opened up a world of creativity for children to experiment with and explore for themselves, as well as enabling kids who felt they had no artistic talent whatsoever to experience for the first time the thrill of drawing attractive designs.

Spirograph was emancipating, and the positive effect it had on people’s creativity and sense of happiness fulfilled my father’s intentions for it. He wanted his inventions to make a positive contribution to life and society, and with Spirograph he succeeded beyond even his wildest dreams.

Fifteen years after launching Spirograph, dad enjoyed a second success with Cyclex – another brilliant pattern drawing device that also remains very popular to this day. But life was not all plain sailing for my father as he experienced great reversals of fortune, too – even losing everything he had at one point. Despite such a colossal setback, dad retained his optimistic approach to life, which was one of the qualities I found most admirable about him.

For someone whose work continues to be so influential it is perhaps surprising that my father’s fascinating story is relatively unknown by the public. Well, I always knew that dad lived an incredible life – but it took the persistent entreaties of a friend to finally make me put pen to paper.

That was back in 2018, and it was Charlotte Bradman – author of The Happy Nomad – who was so keen that dad’s inspiring story be told. Spirograph had been her favourite toy growing up, she explained, and Charlotte was enthralled by the stories I recounted about my father’s life.

But even her great enthusiasm was not enough by itself to make me take the project on. If dad’s life was to be written down then it should be done well, I felt – and that was going to be a lot of work. Did I really want to take on such a challenge?

Charlotte’s enthusiasm was irrepressible, though, and she eventually made me reconsider. I began to feel that I was being unfair in denying others the chance that I had got – to listen to, and be inspired by dad.

Dad’s wit and wisdom benefitted me immensely and I felt like I owed it to the universe to share him with everyone else (if that isn’t a ridiculously corny thing to say!).

While I was deciding whether to write a memoir about dad or not, I realised that there could be something in this for me, too. Through the pages of the book I could explore what dad really meant to me, personally. And that, at its deepest level, came down to our joint desire to find answers to this amazing mystery called life.

That might sound like a grandiose theme for a memoir – but life really was the puzzle that my father found most fascinating of all. In fact, I sometimes wondered if everything he did was not, at least partly, an investigation and experimentation with life.

This theme of spiritual search builds gradually throughout my book, and takes centre stage for the final quarter when I start my own quest for wisdom in parallel to dad’s.

Our paths converge again at the end of my father’s life, when I return home to care for him in his final year. By that time, my spiritual search has reached a satisfying conclusion, and dad is keen to hear about what I’ve found.

In December 2024, I finally finished writing my biography/memoir of dad, and I now hope to have it published so that his story can entertain, help and inspire others.

With this website, I aim to do two things: celebrate dad’s life – and also raise awareness of the book that I have written about him.

I plan to upload quite a lot more information about dad, as well as some other relevant resources – so please bookmark this page and check back regularly to discover more about the inspiring and unique character behind Spirograph – a man who I was lucky enough to call ‘pops’.

Latest Posts:

• Interview with the BBC
• Spirograph at Light Night Leeds
• Interview with Toy Tales
• Interview with Mojo Nation
• So when’s this book coming out, then?

Short video of Dad from Tomorrows World (BBC) 1977.
The full programme has been lost, sadly.