The First Jigsaw Puzzles Were Made to Teach Geography
A jigsaw is a saw with a fine blade, and the puzzle cut with one. The puzzle began as a schoolroom map.
A jigsaw is a saw with a narrow blade for cutting curves, and the puzzle made by cutting a picture into pieces. The puzzle came first as a teaching aid: around 1760 the London mapmaker John Spilsbury mounted maps on wood and cut them along the borders so children could reassemble the countries. He called them dissected maps.
- A fine-bladed saw. *An electric jigsaw.*
- A picture puzzle. *A thousand-piece jigsaw.*
- A complex situation. *Piecing the jigsaw together.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Noun | jigsaw | A cordless jigsaw. |
| Plural | jigsaws | Two jigsaws. |
| Compound | jigsaw puzzle | A jigsaw puzzle. |
| Related | fretsaw | A hand fretsaw. |
| Related | jig | A drilling jig. |
How it is used in a sentence
- The evidence is a jigsaw.Pieces to be assembled.
- Spilsbury made dissected maps in the 1760s.The first jigsaw puzzles.
- A jig guides a tool.Which is where the saw's name comes from.
Jigsaw puzzle facts
- First made — around 1760, as educational maps
- Original name — dissected maps or dissected puzzles
- Cardboard — replaced wood in the twentieth century, making puzzles cheap
- Interlocking pieces — a later refinement, not in the earliest puzzles
- Depression boom — jigsaw sales soared in the 1930s as cheap entertainment
A compound of *jig*, a device guiding a tool, and *saw*. The puzzle sense dates from the early twentieth century.
Who invented the jigsaw puzzle?
John Spilsbury, a London mapmaker, around 1760. His versions were maps cut along national borders to teach geography.
Why is it called a jigsaw?
After the saw with a fine blade used to cut the curved pieces, though the earliest puzzles predate that tool.