Inducted Year: 2002
Around 1760, English mapmaker John Spilsbury pasted one of his maps to a board, cut around the borders, and created the first jigsaw puzzle. The idea caught on, and various British manufacturers created educational puzzles to teach geography, history, and Holy Scripture. Puzzles crossed the Atlantic slowly, however. The first American puzzles appeared around 1850, and, like their predecessors, they featured maps cut from wood. Following the Civil War (1861–1865), well-known game producers such as Milton Bradley and […]
Raggedy Ann and Andy
Inducted Year: 2002
One day in 1915, as the story goes, Johnny Gruelle’s daughter Marcella brought him an old rag doll. He drew a face on the worn fabric and called the doll Raggedy Ann. Gruelle, a cartoonist and illustrator, wrote a children’s book about Raggedy Ann in 1918. Publisher P. F. Volland arranged to sell Raggedy Ann dolls along with the books, and the tie-in between Gruelle’s Raggedy Ann Stories and the dolls proved a marketing hit. In 1920, Gruelle […]
