HISTORY OF THE TANGRAM
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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).
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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.
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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