Tangram
Where this tool comes from
The tangram
The tangram comes from China, where it is called qiqiao ban, “seven boards of skill”. The oldest known tangram books were printed there in the early 1800s, and a tangram craze swept Europe and America around 1817.
One thing to hold: Seven flat pieces cut from one square: five triangles, a square and a parallelogram.
Why it matters: Every picture uses all seven pieces, so every shape you make has the same area as the square.
What we don’t know: Stories that the tangram is thousands of years old were made up; a puzzle writer invented one in 1903. Who first cut the seven pieces is not known.