HISTORY OF THE TANGRAM

 

The tangram is a puzzle of Chinese origin that probably appeared does only 200 ó 300 years. The Chinese were called it " table of wisdom " and " table of sagacity " referring to the qualities that the game needs.

The same word "tangram" is a western invention: it is supposed that it was created by a North American fond of the puzzles, who would have combined tang, a Cantonese word that "Chinese" means, with the suffix Englishman(English) gram (-grass) that it(he,she) means "writing" or "graph" (as in cardiogram).

 

 

The first books on the tangram appeared in Europe at the beginning of the 19th century and they were presenting so much you appear as solutions. It was a question of a few hundreds of images in his(her,your) most figurative as animals, houses and flowers ... close to a scanty representation of abstract forms.


Along the 19th century there appeared diverse books of tangram Chinese, who were copied by the European publishing houses, good test(proof) of the popularity that had acquired the game. From 1818 books were published of tangram in EE. UU., England, France, Germany, Austria and Italy.

 

In the introduction to the book published in Italy one was making notice that the tangram was played " everywhere by real passion ". In effect, though a former Chinese encyclopedia was describing it as " a game of women and children ", the tangram had turned into a universal amusement.

 

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