Spinner, fidget spinner, turntable, hand rot (fidget spinner, hand spinner) - entertaining and antistress toy simulator. In the center of the spinner is a metal or ceramic bearing, several blades / wings or weighting elements are radially positioned. The toy is made of various materials - brass, stainless steel, titanium, copper or plastic. The material and design of the bearings affects the duration of rotation, the type of vibration and noise produced, creating sensory feedback.
Many media have called the author of the spinner 65-year-old graduate of the Polytechnic Institute Rensselaer, software engineer Catherine Hettinger. The daughter of Hettinger suffered from myasthenia gravis - Goldfleam - an autoimmune disease that caused the syndrome of pathological muscle fatigue. Catherine could not play with her daughter, so she collected for her a toy from improvised materials: newspapers and sticky tape. This happened in the 1990s.
May 28, 1993 Hettinger filed a patent for a round device from a single piece of plastic, which could be rotated at the tip of the finger, and sent a prototype toy manufacturers, but they refused. In 1997, the inventor received a patent and began to produce toys on her own, and then sell them at craft fairs.
In 2005, the patent expired, and Hettinger did not renew it: the woman did not have an extra $ 400. She does not have an opinion on whether the 1993 patent should extend to modern spinners, and she answers this question as follows: "You'd better talk to a patent lawyer. I'm too far from that. " At the same time, Hettinger launched a campaign at Kickstarter to raise funds for the production of a classic toy, which it was conceived more than 20 years ago.
At the end of 2016 - beginning of 2017 the spinners gained insane popularity - first in the West, and then in Russia. In the US, it is now the most popular toy, and the application that simulates the rotation of the spinner, took first place in the top of the American App Store.
Perhaps the trend on spinners is related to the popularity of the campaign for the release of the anti-stress cube Fidget Cube, which was launched last year at Kickstarter. This is another simple gadget that can take restless hands: press buttons on it, turn knobs and disks.
On June 16, Kim Kardashian, a reality TV star, released his version of the spinner. A golden color toy depicts a dollar sign, and it says "Daddy": June 18 in the US celebrated Father's Day. The toy costs 15 dollars (about 875 rubles).
