Paper airplanes were known as paper darts long before airplanes were
invented.
Is it possible to post details of the evidence for this?
The model "Wurfpfeil" (dart to throw) was published in Hermann Wagner's
Book "Illustrirtes Spielbuch für Knaben" (Leipzig: Otto Spamer, 1864.
1st edition, page 283). The same model was published as "Ein Wurfpfeil"
(a dart to throw) in Marie Leske's book "Illustrirtes Spielbuch für
Mädchen" (Leipzig: Otto Spamer, 1865, 1st edition, page 55).
In the past the darts were considered as a toy, and probably for this
reason don't appair as sample of "form of life" by the first froebelian
books (Calcar, Jacobs, Köhler, etc...). After airplaines were invented,
some froebelian books (Müller-Wunderlich, etc) included paperplanes as
form of life, not as toy.
However, children discovered very early the lightness of the paper, and
frequently threw sheets of paper through windows of high buildings, as
in the children school "Pedagogium Regium" in Halle/Saale (Germany),
where the folding of paper and napkins was in the pedagogic program
since 1705 (73 years before Froebel's birth!). I asume that children
observed that a sheet of paper folded as a dart, fly better and farther.
The director and founder of this school, August Hermann Francke,
published in the book "Stubenordnung des Pedagogii Regii" (Halle: 1721,
p. 5) the rules that prohibited to throw paper through the windows, and
promoved the first paper basket rules that we know: [...] §. 13. Aus den
Fenstern soll niemand das allegeringste giessen oder werfen: hingegen
kann auf der Stube zum Wasser ein Gefäß, zum Papier und andern
dergleichen Sachen aber ein Beutel oder Kästchen gehalten; und das was
gesamlet ist, von den Bedienten weggetragen werden. [...]
Joan Sallas
Weimar, Germany
