In 1600, the Japanese started folding paper for fun. They made basic shapes like boats, boxes, hats, and cranes. By 1782, origami was very well known in Europe. Friedrich Froebel encouraged kids to practice origami. In 1880, they decided to name paper-folding origami. (Comes from the words oru and kami which mean to fold paper.) By the 1900s, books about origami were published in North America and Europe. Akira Yoshizawa had the idea of modern
creative paper folding.