Who invented the jigsaw puzzle???
Jigsaw puzzles are sold out everywhere. Ever wonder who invented the them? Welcome to the Jigsaw Puzzle edition of WTFF?
Who invented the jigsaw puzzle
Jigsaw puzzles are in the news recently CNN touted their ability to curb anxiety NPR noted that the sales of jigsaw puzzles is soaring and the Wall Street Journal wished us good luck buying one if all this talk about the positivity of puzzling has got you thinking where's the fun from let's talk about jigsaw puzzles.
British mapmaker an engraver John Spilsbury is credited as the inventor of the jigsaw puzzle, he was a cartographer and he created his dissected maps as he called them in order to teach kids geography this Spilsbury dissected map has entitled Europe divided into its kingdoms and was dated 1766 and although it's the earliest known surviving jigsaw puzzle we know Spilsbury was making dissected maps at least three years prior to the state that's because his business was listed in the yellow pages of the times a book known as Mortimer's universal director the listing read Spilsbury John engraver and map dissector in wood in order to facilitate the teaching of geography.
Russell Court jury Lane the first dissected maps sold in America were imported from Europe but after the Civil War u.s. makers like McLaughlin Brothers in New York made them a staple of childhood fun for nearly a hundred years jigsaw puzzles as they came to be known were made of wood and ma
de for kids.
The first puzzle craze started in 1908 causing one columnist
of the time to write the jigsaw puzzle craze where people first suck all the outdoor sports to rearrange bits of queer-shaped wood has taken New York by storm at the height of the craze many people started gluing images to wood and cutting out their own jigsaw puzzles as this ad for a scroll saw suggests but the craze of 1908 was nothing compared to the craze of 1932 in 1933 and that's because puzzles of that era were made of die-cut cardboard which made them cheaper to make and Universal in their appeal by April of 1933 makers in the u.s. claimed to be turning out 30 million puzzles a week there was a hit song called jigsaw puzzle blues and the comedy team of laurel and hardy even made a jigsaw puzzle, the centerpiece of a film which today you can buy as you guessed it a jigsaw puzzle today's top jigsaw puzzle makers include buffalo games seco Springbok and white mountain puzzles you can even go to a web site named after the man himself and by a puzzle at Spilsbury calm but if I may suggest shop local it's the specialty toy retailers that carefully curate what they sell and there you could find a wooden puzzle like this, one it has clever flourishes like pieces cut in the shape of objects that speak to the theme of the puzzle like a songbird Christmas bells a poinsettia a candlestick and even a Christmas angel mr. Spilsbury would be proud.
