A neat way to fold a sheet of paper

A neat way to fold a sheet of paper(wheatpond.com)

268 points by emeltzer 14 years ago | 31 comments

I wonder why this hasn't been a standard for maps for years. By far the most frustrating thing about road trips (pre-iPhone) used to be dragging out the map then trying to put it away again.

Also, as a total aside, this: "over their conventionally folded*" should be punishable by death. Putting an asterisk next to something then not explaining it is pure evil.

gvb 14 years ago | |

Traditional map folding allows you to reference a portion of the map without unfolding it entirely. When I realized this, I stopped hating the map folders.

Ref: http://www.armystudyguide.com/content/army_board_study_guide...

emeltzer 14 years ago | | |

Actually, the same professor (Miura) who invented the fold I talked about in that note came up with another way of folding (that also involves binding part of the map) that does "reference a portion" much better than the traditional way manages. You can find it if you google for "Design of portable maps enabling longitudinal access" Miura, 2006

Pfiffer 14 years ago | | |

"Posted : Monday, January 01, 1900"

Interesting, Y2K must have hit pretty bad for them.

bhickey 14 years ago | |

Often times hiking maps are so large that you couldn't practically unfurl the whole map. In these cases it would be great if you could easily access individual map sections.

If you've ever had your map fall to pieces in the snow, you'll learn to appreciate tyvek maps.

mjdwitt 14 years ago | |

I'm just guessing, but it would make sense for large paper maps not to use this fold so that you can partially unfold it and look only at the portion in which your are currently interested, instead of having a giant unfolded piece of paper. This would be especially nice in a small car where you would lack room to move a completely unfolded map around.

emeltzer 14 years ago | |

Err, if you can issue me a pardon here, that was meant to be a footnote but I got the markdown wrong. The footnote should read: "By conventionally folded I mean folded first horizontally and then vertically such that each folded unit is rectangular."

redthrowaway 14 years ago | | |

Not to worry; if you were the first to do it I wouldn't be upset. It's a staple of websites and textbooks that drives me mad.

leviathan 14 years ago | |

"By far the most frustrating thing about road trips (pre-iPhone) used to be dragging out the map then trying to put it away again."

Even worse is trying to fold back the papers inside medication boxes. They never fold back to the state they were in.

redthrowaway 14 years ago | | |

I thought those were like cotton wads: meant to be disposed of upon opening.

a_a_r_o_n 14 years ago | |

"By far the most frustrating thing about road trips (pre-iPhone) used to be dragging out the map then trying to put it away again."

That's what the back seat is for. Younger people probably don't know that.

jjcm 14 years ago | |

If you look at the kickstarter page, they state that it's because automated map folding works poorly for this folding method. I doubt that it's impossible, but it's a hurdle to overcome.

InclinedPlane 14 years ago | |

I used to keep a local city map folded up this way in my backpack just in case I needed to go somewhere I hadn't been before or got lost biking, or somesuch, it was super useful.

However, the advent of smartphones has made that sort of thing less useful. And for serious wilderness navigation this kind of map folding is very unhelpful since maps tend to be big and it helps to keep the map partially folded so you can focus on one area.

aymeric 14 years ago |

Another neat way to fold a sheet of paper: http://pocketmod.com/

loup-vaillant 14 years ago | |

You just helped me much more that you could have guessed: see, they talked about agendas. And it just occurred to me that the folding method devised by the OP yields a 7×5 grid, which is exactly what I need to fit a month worth of agenda. The squares are relatively small, but they suit my needs.

So, an A4 sheet of paper is worth 2 months of agenda. 6 will last me a year.

I'm too lazy to buy an agenda, but now I have one. Thank you.

pbhjpbhj 14 years ago | |

It's turning a single sheet of paper in to a mini-book - they have an application for download that will convert a pdf in to "pocketmod" physical format. You basically concertina fold the page and make a couple of cuts.

hahla 14 years ago | |

This is amazing. Thank you!

dmn001 14 years ago |

Here is a video showing it clearly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71HTB8UXVII

And another guide (pdf): http://mars.wnec.edu/~thull/combgeom05/handout7.pdf

Link: http://www.britishorigami.info/academic/miura.php

Ted Talk (11m 35s): http://www.ted.com/talks/robert_lang_folds_way_new_origami.h...

CountHackulus 14 years ago |

This is actually very similar to a method of doing tessellated origami with a grid of folds. [1] I wish I could find a picture of it, but I've got an origami tessellation I folded that has this same 1 degree of freedom that allows it to be folded and unfolded by pushing and pulling. Only difference, is that instead of going flat, it turns into a spiral when you compress it. Very similar to [2]. This all being based on the work of Taketoshi Nojima.

[1] http://spacesymmetrystructure.wordpress.com/2009/03/24/origa... [2] http://www.flickr.com/photos/53416300@N00/1028178660

Argorak 14 years ago |

I am pretty sure that this is similar to how the german Falk plans do it for ages. Sadly, I cannot find any english explanations.

Update: its not. But if you are interested: patent (in german) with visual explanation can be found here:

http://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?loc...

raldi 14 years ago |

This company has been doing it for years: http://www.zcard.com/

bigethan 14 years ago |

This is the neatest map folding I've ever seen: http://www.thezoomablemap.com/the-map.html

mise 14 years ago |

I give up.

I wasn't able to get is into the compact folded shape. As far as I can tell, I have the correct folds, but I did some guessing to follow each step.

clux 14 years ago | |

I found it more instructive to look at this for the last steps. http://library.thinkquest.org/28923/miuraori.html

I've tried 3 with different parallelogram angles. The higher you take this angle, the easier it is to fold, however, it's harder to mash together in the final step nicely. The end result also looks less neat if it's too high.

JadeNB 14 years ago |

As a math teacher who's always on the lookout for cool geometric tricks for all levels, I'd love to be able to do this by hand. Does anyone have any advice for how to do this without a ruler? (For example, I don't even know how to fold a paper in 5ths, so I can't get past the very beginning.)

guylhem 14 years ago |

brillant! I'm eager to try that at work tomorrow for my todo list. I like it small (fitting in the pocket) but the way I fold it it quickly falls into pieces

jonah 14 years ago | |

It was a bit tricky to fold cleanly on the first go for me.

I just tried it with US "Letter" paper (8.5 x 11) instead of the A/B size mentioned. To compensate for the different aspect ratio, I used 4x4 folds instead of 4x6. It worked out nicely.

miles_matthias 14 years ago |

Has anyone implemented this digitally with CSS animations?

emeltzer 14 years ago | |

I'd be interested in seeing that. Someone did make it in Wolfram: http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/MiuraMapFoldingAndUnfoldin...