NOTEWORTHY INVENTORS:
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JOHN SPILSBURY
All Grand Forks, East Grand Forks & Crookston locations of: Lo
For literally hundreds of years, people of all ages have enjoyed putting jigsaw puzzles together. Here’s the history of this favorite pastime.
• Today, people enjoy jigsaw puzzles more than any other table game. • The record for the most pieces assembled together in a single jigsaw is 209,250, an event that took place at Taiwan’s Grand Formosa Regent Hotel.
Answer
• In the late 1800s, cardboard puzzles made their debut, mostly for children’s puzzles. For many years, they were not the top seller, as retailers continued to stock mostly wooden puzzles, believing that customers liked them better than “cheap” cardboard varieties.
• During the 1930s, puzzles were a method of advertising, with stores offering free puzzles with the purchase of a toothbrush or other sundry item. The illustration featured an image of the product, a clever way for manufacturers to keep a vision of their item in the consumers’ minds. Puzzles were especially popular during the Great Depression as an inexpensive form of entertainment. Sales of adult puzzles were an astounding 10 million per week. Puzzles were also something that could be made by hand at home by those who could not afford the store-bought kinds.
Weekly SUDOKU
• For the next 50 years, the puzzles were primarily an educational activity. They gradually transitioned into a leisure pastime, with illustrations mounted on plywood. They were still known as “dissections,” but when the treadle saw was introduced around 1880, they began to be called “jigsaw puzzles.” Penciled tracings of where to cut the pieces were made on the back of the wood.
• Early puzzles were quite expensive, as much as $5 for a 500-piece puzzle in 1908, because each piece was cut individually. Cardboard puzzle quality improved and prices dropped with the invention of a device that would die cut them in a press. Strips of metal with sharp edges were fastened to a plate, much like a cookie cutter, enabling the mass production of puzzles.
Answer
• In 1766, when he was 26, Spilsbury devised the idea of mounting maps on a sheet of hardwood. Using a fine-bladed marquetry saw, he cut around the borders of the countries, with the goal of teaching Geography to British students. He called his invention “Dissected Maps,” and became the first commercial manufacturer of jigsaws. Over the next two years, he marketed several different styles, including the world, Africa, America, Asia, Europe, England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland. Unfortunately, Spilsbury did not live to see the great success of his invention, passing away at age 30.
• The puzzles of the early 20th century did not interlock, and many an hour’s work was negated by a bump to the table. Adult puzzles of this era did not have the picture on the box and the subject matter was a mystery until all the pieces were in place.
King CROSSWORD
• Born in England in 1739, at age 14, John Spilsbury became an apprentice to Thomas Jeffreys, an engraver, map seller, and the Royal Geographer to the King. At 21, Spilsbury branched out on his own as an engraver, mapmaker, and printer of children’s educational books, maps, charts, and stationery.
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