John Wallis

John Wallis was a British map and book maker, seller and publisher. After his first business Wallis & Stonehouse went bankrupt in 1778, John Wallis became well-known for producing games and puzzles for children – and claimed to be the inventor of the “dissected”, now “jigsaw” puzzle. However, that accolade really belongs to John Spilsbury (died 1769).

One of Wallis’s first puzzles was Chronological Tables of English History for the Instruction of Youth (1788). From 1813 he worked in collaboration with his sons John Wallis II and Edward Wallis, who continued the business after his death in 1818.