Meet the Inventor
A series of separate events led to the discovery of TOP-NO-SIS and the LSX. It was so long ago it is scary. The following relates what I believe to be the first event that precipitated the long journey to the present.
I collect tops. It was Thanksgiving, 1974 or 1975. I was spinning a little wood top on the back of a rectangular, metal, child’s paint set. I was trying to balance the top on there without letting it fall off while it was spinning. It was challenging. In the process of tilting the little paint set around in order to try to keep the spinning top away from the edges, I began to realize that the little top was attempting to respond to my manipulations in interesting ways. Luckily, that evening, there was another insightful, curious person in the room who was good with her hands, and she grabbed the paint set from me and spun the little top on it and tried to keep it from falling off while it was spinning, just as I did. Well, before you know it, there was a competition going on and to some degree (me more than she) we obsessed over that little top, and how long we could keep it going, for the entire evening and weeks afterwards. I was convinced energy could be passed from me to the top successfully. It was not to be. Neither the little top that gave me the idea nor any other top in my collection could I get to process energy. I searched for and bought more tops and still could get none to perform the way I envisioned. Time passed.... I had dreams of tops spinning indefinitely by manipulating them on a board that could be tilted like a record album..... I persevered..... I learned how to build tops..... For two years I built tops of all shapes and sizes. Then I got lucky and discovered something about tops in my experimentation. Within two weeks of my little discovery I had a top that allowed me to process energy into it and the LSX and TOP-NO-SIS were born! I can’t remember if it was 1976 or 1977. For about 17 years TOP-NO-SIS was used as a therapeutic device by various folks in the business of healing.... occupational therapists, psychotherapists, hypno-therapists, drug counselors etc. The therapeutic applications are numerous. I decided to market it as a toy in 1993. In November 1994 I found my way to FAO SCHWARZ 5th AVENUE where it remained one of the best selling toys until 2007. It is now only available online. |