The company was founded by Otto Robert Maier with seat in Ravensburg, a town in Upper Swabia in southern Germany. He began publishing in 1883 with his first author contract. He started publishing instruction folders for craftsmen and architects, which soon acquired him a solid financial basis. His first board game appeared in 1884, named "Journey around the world". At the turn of the 20th century, his product line broadened to include picture books, books, children’s activity books, Art Instruction manuals, non-fiction books, and reference books as well as children’s games, Happy Families and activity kits. In 1900, the Ravensburger blue triangle trademark was registered with the Imperial Patent office. As of 1912, many board and activity games had an export version that was distributed to Western Europe, the countries of the Danube Monarchy as well as Russia. Before the First World War, Ravensburger had around 800 products. The publishing house was damaged during the Second World War and continued to produce games in the years of the reconstruction. The company focused on children's games and books and specialized books for art, architecture and hobbies, and from 1962 grew strongly. The company started to produce jigsaw puzzle games in 1964, and in the same year opened subsidiaries in Austria, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. In 1977 the company split into a book publishing arm and a game publishing arm. Today there are approximately 1800 available books and 850 games as well as puzzles, hobby products and CD-ROM titles at Ravensburger and its subsidiaries, which include Alea for "hobby and ardent game players" and FX Schmid for games, playing cards and children's books. Ravensburger products are exported to more than fifty countries. Ravensburger also expanded to video games in the late 1990s by forming Ravensburger Interactive, which they sold in May 2002 to JoWooD Productions. Under the label, F.X. Schmid, Ravensburger produce one of the only two packs of true Tarock cards in Germany: a 54-card pack with genre scenes used for playing the Tarot game of Cego popular in the Black Forest region. In September 2010, Ravensburger broke Educa's record for the world's largest jigsaw puzzle of 24,000 pieces. Ravensburger's new puzzle design by late pop artist Keith Haring titled, "Keith Haring: Double Retrospect" breaks the Guinness Book of World Records measuring 17' × 6' built from 32,256 pieces and comes with its own dolly cart for toting. Currently the largest commercial puzzle is Kodak's "27 Wonders from Around The World". Ravensburger's currently largest puzzle is "Memorable Disney Moments" with 40,320 pieces. Swedish toy train company BRIO was acquired by the Ravensburger Group on 8 January 2015. In 2017, Ravensburger acquired American game company Wonder Forge. The company's North American division, Ravensburger NA, is based in Seattle and releases approximately 25 games per year, the most successfully of which so far is Villainous, based on various Disney properties. Ravensbuger NA sold about 3 million copies of games in 2018.
