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Title
Some early topological puzzles: Part 1
Authors
David Singmaster
Abstract
For some time, I considered the 1723-1725 edition of Ozanam's Récréations mathématiques et physiques as the first book to cover topological puzzles in detail and I only knew of a few earlier examples. Ozanam certainly gives many more examples than any previous book.  In the last few years, I have discovered some early sources which show several topological puzzles as being considerably older than I previously knew.  Here I show them.
Keywords
African beads puzzle, Chinese wallet, flick-flack, Jacob's ladder, Möbius strip, Solomon's seal, star of David, topological puzzles, Victoria puzzle
Milestones
Published: 2015/03/20
Author Details
David Singmaster
zingmast@gmail.com
London South Bank University, UK

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