ENGINEERING
INDUSTRIAL ORIGAMI
Henry Petroski
A
bout two years ago, I published in these
pages a nostalgic article on folding and
delivering newspapers—at least the way
we paperboys did in the New York City borough
of Queens in the mid-1950s (see “Engineering,”
May–June 2002). That article, and my memoir
on the same subject, prompted an uncommon
amount of mail from readers, many of whom
hailed from different geographical locations and
different times. Many of them had delivered
newspapers in their youth, and most of them
had dealt quite differently with the technological
design problem of preparing the paper for tossing
onto a subscriber’s stoop or porch. The correspondence, which was often accompanied by samples
of folded newspapers, reminded me of the variety
of ways available to address any technological
problem. Unlike in science and mathematics, engineering does not necessarily offer universally
natural and certainly not unique solutions.
The commonly accepted laws of physics are
the same everywhere in the world. If we speak
of, say, Japanese science as opposed to U.S. science, we refer not to the underlying principles
but to the cultural and sociological differences
that govern styles of thinking and interaction
among scientists. The truths of such culturebound endeavors are universal and so the same
no matter who the scientists are or where they
are practicing. Cultural and even individual differences among engineers, on the other hand,
can have profound effects on what is produced.
Thus, some things made in China have a different look to them than things made to serve a
similar purpose in America. They reflect the culture within which they were created. Automobiles made in Japan are recognizably different—
though perhaps increasingly less so—from cars
made in Sweden, Germany, France or Detroit.
They are all automobiles, of course, but they
represent different end results as manifested not
only in styling and amenities but also in mechanical details and performance. They may exploit
the laws of nature in different ways, but they are
all immediately recognizable as automobiles.
Henry Petroski is Aleksandar S. Vesic Professor of Civil Engineering and a professor of history at Duke University. Address:
Box 90287, Durham, NC 27708-0287.
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American Scientist, Volume 93
Reading Above the Fold
Newspapers are also distinguished by their cultural origins, and not just in their language. We
can see this whenever we travel internationally
and sit among people of different cultures reading newspapers in different languages. We might
note the incidental differences: Some newspapers are read horizontally and some vertically,
some left to right and others right to left. Some
use color in distinctive ways, and some rely on
photographs more than others. Such differences
allow us to distinguish from a distance the New
York Times from the London Times, the Wall Street
Journal from the Financial Times, Le Monde from
der Spiegel, and USA Today from the New York
Post. Still, whether they are tabloids or broadsheets, they all share common qualities that we
recognize as the essence of newspaperness. We
know a newspaper when we see one.
The act of reading a newspaper is also obvious
and worldwide, but the styles of doing so are as
varied as the papers themselves. Reading a tabloid
is perhaps the easiest, in large part because its
smaller size and single crease enable the paper to
be kept more or less neat and compact, even when
opened. Broadsheet newspapers are creased twice
in the process of being made, which gives them
not only a more collapsible geometry but also one
that is more expansive when open. In crowded
spaces, such as airplanes or other public conveyances, an open newspaper tends to encroach on
neighbors. Readers solve the problem in a variety
of ways. Some read only the front page of each
section, forgoing the continuation of any story until they reach a place with more freedom of movement. Other readers fold the paper back on itself, a
process that encroaches on neighbors only as long
as the paper is opened full width to turn the page.
Readers in the New York City in which I
grew up employed a special technique, one in
which the broadsheet newspaper never had to be
opened to full width. In this “New York fold,” the
paper was first creased lengthwise, thus reducing its width by half. In this configuration, pages
could be turned in a much more compact manner, though one had to become adept at folding
and refolding the paper back on itself to expose a
story or its continuation. In a New Yorker article a
few years ago, George W. S. Trow recalled being
© 2005 Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. Reproduction
with permission only. Contact [email protected].
Figure 1. This sequence of folds was used by Charles R. Siple's father to render a broadside newspaper small enough to be read on a crowded streetcar. This fold is quite similar to the one the author knew as the "New York fold" growing up in Queens. (Illustration courtesy of Charles R. Siple.)
taught this “fairly complicated” technique by his
father. Trow wrote that the skill, which he didn’t
think he had retained, “proved almost useless” to
him. My experience has been different. Although
it was developed for the crowded city subways,
or so we believed, the urban fold has served me
well whenever I have found myself in the middle
seat on a fully booked air-shuttle flight.
Manifold Surprise
Perhaps Trow read but did not deliver newspapers as a boy. We often hear that once we master
riding a bike, we never forget the skill. The same
can be said of tying shoelaces, telling time and
(for a paper deliverer) folding newspapers. When
I have given talks about being a paperboy—they
were all boys in my neighborhood, but as I was
reminded by readers, not everywhere—I have
often demonstrated the way we folded the papers
not for reading but for delivery, and on not a few
occasions members of the audience have come
up to me afterwards and showed me how they
folded their papers differently. Each of us could
perform his own style of industrial origami in a
flash, even with our eyes closed, but neither could
easily follow what the other was doing. Reverse
engineering a folded paper can be surprisingly
confusing, since so much of what goes into the
process is lost in the finished artifact.
This was made abundantly clear to me when
I began to receive letters containing step-by-step
instructions, drawings and curiously folded
newspapers in the mail. If for no other reason
than to compare their efficacy, I tried to replicate
the foreign folds, but it was often difficult to do
by just following some instructions or sketches
or without unfolding the single example. This
latter action was something I was reluctant to
do, lest in the process of unfolding the paper I
not only destroyed its special configuration but
also left myself with no exemplar against which
to check my own attempts. On more than one
occasion, I had to write back for more explicit
step-by-step instructions.
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One correspondent whose drawings I had
little trouble deciphering is Charles R. Siple, who
grew up in the Pittsburgh area and who went on
to be a patent draftsman. Siple recalled his father
riding the streetcars to work and “when the seating was squeezed” folding the paper in a manner
much like the New York fold recalled by Trow. In
the 1930s, Siple was a “Press boy,” delivering the
final edition of the Pittsburgh Press each day, supporting the flat papers at his side with the aid of
a strap and folding them as he walked his route.
The simplest fold that he recalled reminded me
of the one I used almost exclusively, but he also
described two other folds that were totally new
to me. One involves a final twist that tightens the
paper; the other is a variation on a square fold
that we used only when the paper had so few
pages that the standard fold would not hold.
Perhaps because of his background working
with patents, which typically do not have physical models associated with them, Siple did not
include examples of papers folded according to
his instructions.
Another reader, J. Kenneth Smail, a professor of anthropology at Kenyon College, did not
send drawings, but his written instructions were
accompanied by examples of folded papers.
According to Smail, his experience delivering
the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in the early 1950s involved using a “5 fold plus end twist” technique
to prepare the papers for tossing onto porches.
The steps in his folding procedure were:
1. Fold loose edge on right of paper over,
about 4/5 of the paper’s width (or a little
less).
2. Fold this already-folded portion (see instruction 1) over once again.
3. Tuck/insert upper half of this doublefolded part into closed edges on left.
4. Twist bottom of paper to tighten tube
(usually by inserting fingers).
© 2005 Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. Reproduction
with permission only. Contact [email protected].
2005 January–February
13
Figure 2. When Charles R. Siple delivered certain sizes of the Pittsburgh Press, a final twist helped keep the newspaper tightly together when tossed. (Illustration courtesy of Charles R. Siple.)
I might never have deciphered this last step
without the benefit of the finished product and
Siple’s drawings showing the steps in achieving
his own twist fold.
Carl E. Locke, Jr., “threw papers” around
mid-century in Fort Worth, Texas, before going on to become a chemical engineer and dean
of engineering at the University of Kansas. He
described delivering papers on foot, carrying
them in a canvas bag slung over his shoulder
and also folding them for just-in-time delivery
as he walked from house to house. He delivered
both the Forth Worth Press and the Star-Telegram,
and he used different folds for each, as well as
different folds for different days of the week,
reflecting the different problems presented by
the widely varying size of newspapers from day
to day. All told, he used six different folds, which
he called: square fold; Saturday fold; Press fold;
Star-Telegram twist fold (which is distinct from
the twist fold of Siple and Smail); Sunday fold; and
screen fold. Collectively, they represented most of
the variations I had been exposed to by readers.
Appropriate Folding
Ironically, for a medium that trades so heavily in words, narrative accounts of how to fold
a newspaper are seldom effective: A picture is
indeed worth a thousand words—and a finished
product worth a thousand pictures. To describe
his library of folds, Locke employed a newly
gotten digital camera and created a PowerPoint
presentation, which he sent to me via e-mail. By
that time, I had seen just about all the folds in his
repertoire, but the Press fold remained stubbornly elusive to me—until Locke sent me a further
PowerPoint presentation, in which the fold was
developed step by step.
As we know, the thickness of most American
newspapers varies considerably from Sunday to
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American Scientist, Volume 93
daily, and it also can vary quite a bit from Monday through Saturday, largely depending on how
many advertisements are carried. Because of the
wide variation in thickness (and hence weight)
of the papers (in my case, ranging from as few as
12 pages on a Monday or Saturday to well over
a hundred on Thursdays, when sales were advertised), a fold that worked for one day’s paper
did not work for another. Hence Locke’s range of
folds: The Saturday fold was physically impossible to execute with a Thursday paper, and the
Press fold impossible with the Sunday.
It was only on Mondays and Saturdays, when
the paper could be very thin, that we who delivered the Long Island Daily Press departed from our
standard daily fold and used a square fold instead. According to Dennis R. Morgan, who delivered newspapers in Cincinnati in the mid-1950s,
paperboys in the Midwest might have “required
an increased throwing range” because yards were
somewhat larger than on the East Coast, so they
found it “customary to ‘box’ the paper,” which he
described with the following instructions: “first
fold once along the long edge, then into thirds,
then bend down one side in an ear, and tuck the
final third inside.” According to Morgan, this resulted in “a compact 6” X 6” X 1/2” projectile that
could be accurately and reliably thrown 100 feet
or more (imparting a spin for stability).”
The manner in which a paper was folded could
also depend on the shape of the paper. Dave Gomberg, who delivered papers contemporaneously
with me, wrote describing the “tomahawk fold”
that was his paperboy culture’s preferred one for
thin papers. When I asked him to describe the
fold, he set out to reproduce it with a recent issue
of the San Francisco Chronicle but had first to trim it
to the proportions of the papers he had delivered.
According to Gomberg, a paper so folded “could
be thrown well over 50 feet.” Locke’s “screen
© 2005 Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. Reproduction
with permission only. Contact [email protected].
fold” superficially resembles the tomahawk, but
it lacked a final tuck and so was a configuration
that did not stay closed by itself. But that did not
matter, since it was not designed to be thrown.
Indeed, Locke reports having used the screen fold
on rainy days, its pointed triangular shape being
well suited to inserting the paper into the handle
of a screen door, thus keeping it out of the rain.
The tomahawk fold was also used in the East
Bay area of San Francisco in the 1950s, according
to Wesley Schlotzhauer, Jr., a senior professor
at DeVry University. He recalls more than just
the folds, demonstrating how even the smallest detail of a technological system can play a
significant role in the smooth functioning of the
entire system:
We carried our papers in double bags with
a poncho-style head hole. The bags were
supported by both shoulders with one bag
hanging in front of our chests and the other
hanging down our backs. We stuffed the papers in the bags, alternating the base of the
folded triangles up and down. On bicycle or
on foot, we pulled out and threw the apexup papers [from the front bag], and then we
reversed the bags and threw the apex-up
papers from [the new front] “pouch.” (New
paperboys would frequently empty the front
bag completely and then struggle desperately to overcome being choked due to the
weight of the back bag pulling down.) When
we had again half-emptied the now front
bag, we reversed the bags again. Now there
was room to get our hands “deep” into the
bag and grab the down apex of the triangle.
So it went until we had emptied both bags.
So as important as the folds that they used
were, paperboys also had to be clever at carrying
their loads. Joe S. Herring, a professional engineer, grew up in Rockport, Illinois, around 1950.
Though he did not have his own paper route, he
occasionally filled in for friends and remembers
how the papers were prepared for delivery. Herring recalls that small editions of the Rockport Pilot were folded into “a flat, approximately square
package which could be sailed like a Frisbee.”
Larger editions were not folded in the strictest
sense. In this case,
Papers were typically rolled with the axis
of the roll parallel to the main fold. Several turns of fine twine were then wrapped
around the end of the rolled paper, and then
the wrapped twine rolled to the center of
the rolled paper. This twisted the several
turns of twine sufficiently to secure it without any knot.
He also remembers that for larger routes the papers were carried saddle-bag style: in two bags
straddling the rear wheel of the bicycle. According to Herring, the “dual rear bag arrangement
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Figure 3. Carl E. Locke, Jr., used what he called the
“Press fold” to deliver the Fort Worth Press. (The clip
is used only to hold the paper for photography of steps
involved). (Photographs courtesy of Carl E. Locke, Jr. )
made throwing the papers more efficient since
the [rolled] paper could be picked out of the bag
and thrown to the opposite side with the throwing arm following a single, smooth, arc, and with
the choice of right or left hand throws depending
on which side of the street the particular customer was located.”
Another reader described wrapping not his papers but his bicycle tires with rope, in order to gain
traction in the snow. Cliff Sayre, a retired mechani-
© 2005 Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. Reproduction
with permission only. Contact [email protected].
2005 January–February
15
Figure 4. “Saturday fold” was used to deliver that relatively small edition of the Fort Worth Press. (Photograph
courtesy of Carl E. Locke, Jr.)
cal engineering professor from the University of
Maryland, anticipated his professional acumen by
cutting off the handle of his wagon so that the shaft
could be inserted into the throat of a spare bicycle
fork, which in turn could be attached to the rear
axle of his bicycle. In this manner, he could carry all
the papers for his rather large and long route, even
though they did not all fit into the basket attached
to his handlebars. When he had to stop to replenish
the basket with papers from the wagon, the bike
was held upright by the attached makeshift trailer.
Folds, Old and New
Paper folding certainly predates paperboys. It is
at least as old as the making of books. Bookbinding is essentially the sewing together of folded
sheets. Printing itself involves considerable paper folding, and the very names of book formats refer to the number of times the printed
sheets must be folded before binding takes place.
Thus, a folio results when the sheets are folded
once, a quarto when folded twice (producing
four double-sided pages), an octavo thrice, et
cetera. At least as early as the 18th century, print
shop workers made a pressman’s hat by folding
a sheet of paper in origami fashion. These hats
are believed to have helped keep hairs off of the
inked type and wet paper, as well as keep the
tacky ink out of the pressman’s hair. Modern
pressmen, working in large newspaper plants
with rooms filled with massive presses, continue
the tradition of wearing the hats.
Paper folding is also the subject of serious
mathematical and scientific study, with applications ranging from packing airbags to compacting lenses to be launched into space. There is an
emerging field of computational origami, which
is also termed origami sekkei. The coding and information theorist David Huffman was a pioneer
in this field of technical folding, and his folded
paper figures remain strikingly elegant works of
art. Former laser physicist Robert Land, who is
now described as a computational origamist, has
written a book on relevant mathematical methods and has developed appropriate software.
The objective of much origami sekkei is to fold
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American Scientist, Volume 93
paper in such a way as to put no strain on it. The
possibility of achieving such a configuration,
which sometimes involves even curved folds,
is an ideal that has relevance to the forming of
sheet metal in the automotive industry.
But paperboys seldom if ever folded papers for
any purpose other than delivery. And few if any
considered the etiquette of folded newspapers,
which of course had to be unfolded to be read. The
more complicated and tight folds naturally creased
and disfigured the papers more severely than the
simpler ones. Overly tight folds could even result
in the customer tearing the paper trying to open it.
This appears to be what caused some customers to
request (read, demand) that their papers be delivered flat, but they were in a distinct minority. The
overwhelming majority of subscribers accepted
their papers folded, just as we accept our letters
folded in an envelope. There is, of course, a proper
and an improper way to insert a letter or card
into an envelope, and those who appreciate such
distinctions can derive not a little pleasure in unpacking such a letter. It is nice to think that equally
appreciative newspaper subscribers admired the
properly folded paper that opened easily and presented for reading a minimally creased artifact.
To me, however, the folded newspaper is a
metaphor for an engineering solution to a practical problem. There is virtually no science involved, but the projectile so formed follows the
laws of physics as surely as does an intercontinental ballistic missile. No doubt, a science of
newspaper folding could be developed, perhaps
employing combinatorial topology or some other esoteric mathematics, but it would not likely
capture the art and etiquette practiced and remembered so vividly by countless paperboys
(and -girls) of a different era. Not all engineering
needs science and mathematics to explain its
mysteries or its realities.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to the many readers—both those named
in this column and those whose letters I did not have
space to quote—who have shared with me their experiences folding and delivering newspapers. I am
especially thankful to Charles Siple, who shared with
me the pages of his memoirs containing his illustrations of how to make various paper folds. In addition,
I am indebted to Jim McGill for the title of this column—and for sending me an example of a paper sack
incorporating a strong and secure handle made with
just three folds and a tuck.
Bibliography
Lang, Robert J. 2003. Origami Design Secrets: Mathematical
Methods for an Ancient Art. Natick, Mass.: A. K. Peters.
Petroski, Henry. 2003. Paperboy: Confessions of a Future Engineer. New York: Vintage Books.
Trow, George W. S. 1998. Folding the Times. New Yorker,
December 28 and January 4, 1999, pp. 48+.
Wertheim, Margaret. 2004. Cones, curves, shells, towers: He
made paper jump to life. New York Times, June 22, p. F2.
© 2005 Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. Reproduction
with permission only. Contact [email protected].