Norman Sas, a toy manufacturer that has become a metal plate that vibrates in an exciting board game called football and sometimes infuriating power, winning the devotion of children from 1940 until the end of action came to the field simulated video screens in 1980, died June 28 at his home in Vero Beach, Florida at the age of 87 years.
His daughter Wendy Jones has confirmed his death.
In 1930, an employee in a New York metal products company led by the father of Mr. Sas has developed a device that figures pushed through a metal surface by means of vibrations created by a small motor.
The company, Tudor Metal Products, was first used technology for cars and racing games. However, when Norman Sas bought the company with a partner shortly after the Second World War, saw the potential application of technology in football, which had become increasingly popular and began to be televised in the region of New York.
"I was looking for something to be addressed, because the company was in trouble," said Earl Shores, a writer who has met several times with Mr. Sas for a book that he and a colleague claims, Roddy Garcia, is writing the power of football, entitled "What is called unforgettable."
Mr. Shores said Mr. Sas may also have been designed for football because of the frustrations of technology: the vibrations tend to drive the figures unpredictable, often in groups that resembled a crash at the end of a string football game. The lack of predictability and attempt to mitigate came to define the electric football as much as his little balls of felt, which is easily lost among the sofa cushions.
"I'm sure there were many young boys thrown against the wall," said Sas Irene, wife of Mr. Sas, in an interview Tuesday. "The statue had their own lives. Just as they had run faster or run was all the techniques of the player. It was just something that lights up and vibrates. I 'was something you did men with their children. "
Early versions of the game, including figures that seemed little real players. But in 1960, Mr. Sas has begun working with an industrial designer, Lee Payne, who had played one year of college football at the University of Georgia. Payne helped to improve the aesthetics of the game, making more realistic figures, the colors of the specific team, giving players a degree of directional control and the addition of a representation of a stage cardboard, which is mounted along the frame.
The National Football League has begun to license the product in 1967 and became a fixture in the toys in the Sears catalog.
The company, which Mr. Sas renamed Tudor Games, flourished in 1980, until the introduction of new gaming handheld, and then the computer and video games, did seem strange for a new generation of children.
"Norman has predicted that," said Ms. Sas. "He said, 'Hey, this is now we are making a killing on it, and will end as soon as the electronic versions come out.'".
Mr. Sas sold the company to Miggle Toys in 1988. Miggle was purchased this year by the classics of the stadium, a Seattle company, which makes the games licensed by Major League Baseball, but recently was renamed Tudor Games.
Anders Norman Sas was born in Manhattan, 29 March 1925. He attended the Bronx School of Science and has a degree in mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as part of a program of the Navy.
Later he became a full time officer and served in the Navy before returning to MIT and earned a masters in business administration. He became president of Tudor metal products in 1948. For over 30 years has lived in Alpine, New Jersey, where he served on the board.
Besides his wife and daughter, Mrs. Jones, will survive another daughter, Martha O'Connor, and seven grandchildren. A son, Wayne, who died in 1994, and a son died shortly after birth.
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