Typescript, The Seven Clever Blocks
date: label: date made
content: 1925
name: label: maker
content: Wheeler, Albert Harry
notes: label: Description
content: “THE SEVEN CLEVR BLOCKS: CHINESE PICTURE PUZZLE STORIES” is the title of a 1925 typescript for a book by A. Henry Wheeler, a mathematics teacher. The manuscript includes stories that describe transformations and include illustrations that represent those transformations. The figures in the illustrations, as well as the titles and page numbers, are tangrams [see 1979.3002.134 for a short description of tangrams and their history].
label: Description
content: The pages of the typescript have two holes as do the texts with page numbers and mock-ups for two stories. In “THE FLYING COW” a cow is transformed into a bird and an illustration of a standing cow is transformed into one of a flying bird. In “A CHINESE JONAH” and its illustrations a man is transformed into a fish. In addition there is text with illustrations for another story, “THE LAUGHING CAT” that transforms a man into a cat lying on his back and laughing. Also with two holes are pages with illustration of tangrams represented in the stories as well as some of animals that are not.
label: Description
content: Other items include an envelope containing “THE SEVEN CLOVER BLOCKS: For making the Pictures” and numerous pages of tangrams representing people, letters, and transformations produced from them. Among these are tangrams of what appears to be titles of stories without contents. These include “THE TREE THAT LOST ITS SHADOW” and “THE WOMAN IN THE MOON.”
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
topic: label: Subject
content: Mathematics
label: Subject
content: Games
label: Subject
content: Mathematical Recreations
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Mathematics
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gift of Louise D. Campbell
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1979.3002.135
label: catalog number
content: 1979.3002.135
label: nonaccession number
content: 1979.3002
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Sheets, Set of
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: paper (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: black (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: tan (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: white (overall color)
label: Measurements
content: average spatial: 1.1 cm x 38 cm x 59.5 cm; 7/16 in x 14 31/32 in x 23 7/16 in