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"Who exactly conceived the idea of jigsaw puzzles?" The idea of dicing a perfectly beautiful picture into little sections and after that putting every one of them together again really seems very absurd. Were jigsaw puzzles inspired by the King's Men? Just think back a bit. At the time when Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall, all the King's horses and all the King's men just couldn't put him back together again. Of course they weren't able to. Horses don't have hands so how could they actually put all of those tiny bits of egg shell together again! Or perhaps it was the ancient Eqyptians? Exactly what did a palace employee do when he dropped a cuneiform tablet breaking it into a thousand little pieces? I am certain he attempted to do something like this in case the Pharoah noticed and relegated him to a life of slavery producing bricks of hay and mud! Absolutely no, it was a mapmaker! A man by the name of John Spilsbury takes all the credit for having invented the very first jigsaw puzzle in 1767. Mr Spilsbury was a mapmaker who stuck a map of the world onto a piece of wood and then cut out every country. This was his very first puzzle. Sorting out all of the countries and piecing them together again was certainly an usual tool for learning geography. Nowadays I do believe there are several pieces we would rather leave off a world map - it might even be a strategy for greater world peace! In any event, let us not get sidetracked now ... These kind of jigsaw puzzles were referred to as "Dissected Maps" and soon became popular in the British nobility. Developments continued and the rich had wooden puzzles while the poor had cardboard ones. Practically nothing much has changed. Nowadays youngsters are the rich who have the wooden puzzles and grown ups are the poor who have the cardboard ones. Doesn't seem fair, does it? The Great Depression saw the development of die-cut, mass produced cardboard jigsaw puzzles. During those dark days it was a fantastic,cheap source of family enjoyment. Sewing machine technology A terrific development in jigsaw puzzle technology happened in the 1930's. A gentleman named Charles Russell hailing from Massachusetts attached a saw blade to his good wife's sewing machine and used this for sawing out the wooden jigsaw puzzles. If I were his better half, I do not feel I would have been much impressed. I rather like using my sewing machine for myself. Contemporary developments Great innovations have carried on since that time, with a great improvement in the level of quality of cardboard and die-cutting methods. It's also genuinely rewarding to be able to frame a finished jigsaw puzzle, a constant reminder of all your perseverance and also a good way of showing off to your buddies. But it has not stopped here. You now get customized jigsaw puzzles with businesses producing jigsaw puzzles with your own photographs. Thats a wonderful present to give yourself or even a close friend.
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