Prehistory: Britain’s one-night stand with origami started in the Sixties, when magician Robert Harbin (working at the time with a young Rolf Harris) wrote the first popular book on the subject, and persuaded ITV to make a TV series on the subject for children. For seconds, the whole country was folding little birds.

History: In the late Eighties, origami was dead in the popular imagination, but boffins started to apply raw computer power to the field and wrote programs to work out solutions to folding problems such as “How do you make a spider with thin legs?” Overnight, origami designs became fiendishly complicated.

King Geek: One of the most successful programmers/folders is Robert Lang , a former Nasa scientist who is now a full-time professional folder. He literally wrote the book on designing new shapes, and sells tiny paper creations for $800 each. He’s also an origami consultant to industry, working out new ways to fold car airbags and space telescopes.

The new breed: Origami is now a hip hobby for maths geeks, who trade folding patterns on the internet. The Japanese master is Satoshi Kamiya, who folds phenomenally complicated dragons. Watch videos of his work here. MIT alumnus Brian Chan once folded a giant squid attacking a sailing ship. From one piece of paper.

The future: Robert Lang was recently profiled in The New Yorker. Expect a film with Harrison Ford as a tortured origami genius redeemed when his folding solar mirrors save the world from global warming.

Florence Temko was one of the most prolific authors of origami books in the English language and renowned as an expert origami teacher. She wrote her first craft book in 1962; a further 70 or so followed.

Florence Maria Marx was born in Wembley, northwest London, in 1921, to Erich Marx, an engineer, and his wife Erna. There was an elder brother, Theo. Florence was educated at Wycombe Abbey School and at St George’s Business College. She also attended the London School of Economics.

Her first job was at Romford, Essex, working for Roneo, the duplicating manufacturers. Later she worked in the purchasing department of Selection Trust, a company that had interests in copper and diamond mines in South Africa. During the war she served as an air raid warden in Wembley and on one occasion returned to her home to find that several houses in her street had been hit. She was relieved to find her parents’ home undamaged. Another time a 5-inch chunk of metal from an anti-aircraft shell missed hitting her by only 3ft. She kept the shrapnel as a souvenir.

While on a weekend break to Brighton she met Leonard Temko, ten years her senior, who was a US Army sergeant. He was stationed at Bushy Park and was in charge of the communications room that ran teletype between SHAEF (Supreme Headquaters Allied Expeditionary Force) and Washington. The couple became engaged and were married in London just after the war. Florence travelled to the US on the Italian liner SS Vulcania — one of several ships that carried more than 12,000 GI brides to a new life in America. She arrived at her new home in Montclair, New Jersey, in March 1946. After leaving the army Leonard started his own electronics business and the couple had three children.

In 1948 Leonard fell ill and needed hospital treatment at a spa in Clinton Falls in upstate New York. While visiting him Florence met Lillian Kruskal, whose husband Joseph was in the same hospital. Lillian, at 49, was almost twice her age but the women found that they both enjoyed crafts and shared other interests. They spent many hours together in the occupational therapy department learning to make woolly animals. After their husbands returned home they kept in touch and met regularly. They decided to try to sell some of the soft toys that they had made and were successful in persuading several shops in New York to stock them. Florence would travel from New Jersey over to Lillian’s apartment in New York every Monday to help to deliver the merchandise. The enterprise ended in 1950 after Joseph Kruskal died and Florence had given birth to twins.

In 1956 Florence met Lillian for lunch at the Russian Tea Room in Manhattan and Lillian taught her how to make a simple origami house that she had just learnt from the recently published book Paper Magic by Robert Harbin. Temko later wrote: “I was hooked and thus began my love for origami.” She quickly acquired her own copy of the book. An article about Kruskal appeared in The New York Times in June 1958 and she was interviewed about origami on television. As a result, people demanded to be taught origami and an instruction group was formed. This eventually became the Origami Centre of New York and in more recent years evolved to become an international organisation, Origami USA.

Temko was present at the group’s first meeting in October 1958 and became a regular attender. In that year she presented her first series of origami classes at the Old Mill Art Association in Tinton Falls, New Jersey. She expected only about half a dozen people but nearly 100 turned up. She was soon in even greater demand and and found herself giving frequent lessons to schools and women’s groups.

In 1961 she contracted hepatitis after eating infected mussels and was bedridden for six months. During this time she folded all the models in Paper Magic and those from another Japanese origami book. She also started creating her own simple designs. After recovering she resumed giving demonstrations in schools and clubs. She sometimes taught to groups as large as 200 at a time.People often asked her for instructions so that they could remake the models at home. In the days before photocopying, computers and the internet she decided that the answer would be to write her own book. A book proposal including ten origami models was turned down by about 30 New York publishers but one, Platt & Munk, well known for children’s books, phoned to ask if she could write a book on paper cutting as the author previously commissioned had dropped out. Temko seized the opportunity.

This first book, published in 1962, was called Kirigami — the Creative Art of Papercutting. The diagrams were done by a professional artist Joan Stoliar and the 16-page book was sold in a box with sheets of origami paper. The book sold 600,000 copies. This was the first English language book to use the word kirigami although the word had been used in Japan for a long time. In the book, the author was described: “As a lecturer, she has introduced Origami, the art of paperfolding and Kirigami, the creative art of paper cutting to tens of thousands of Americans, of all ages — schoolchildren and adults”.

During most of the 1960s Temko worked as a travel agent, which enabled her to travel at discounted fares. In 1964 she participated in a special travel agents’ tour to Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Bangkok and Singapore. While in Tokyo she was able to meet the world-famous origami artist Akira Yoshizawa, who is credited as having turned a simple children’s hobby into a true art form. Her visit with Yoshizawa was reported in the Asahi Shimbum, Tokyo’s premier newspaper. She also met two other well-known Japanese origami artists, Toyoaki Kawai and Kosho Uchiyama. The following year Kawai led a group of 30 Japanese paperfolders who demonstrated origami at the New York World Fair. Temko entertained them at a party at her home in New Jersey.

The traditional art of origami has reached the Final Frontier: Japan is to release a squadron of paper aeroplanes in outer space.

After the experimental launch this year about 100 paper planes could be bearing down on the planet as they are captured by the Earth’s gravitational pull.

Astronomers and stargazers should have plenty of warning of the planes’ arrival: Shinichi Suzuki, the University of Tokyo professor behind the scheme, believes that the paper squadron will take several months to complete its gentle, gliding descent from upper atmosphere to landing.

The origami planes, which will measure about 20cm (8in) each, are to be hurled into the void by a Japanese astronaut scheduled to visit the International Space Station this summer. Should one of the fleet miraculously make it to Earth, its journey will have been about 300 miles, no doubt the longest flight for a paper plane.

The planes are statistically most likely to land in the sea. But if one floats down to solid ground, the lucky finder will be able to unfold it and discover the return address at the Japan Space Agency.

“It’s going to be the space version of a message in a bottle,” Professor Suzuki said. “It will be great if someone picks one up, We are thinking of writing messages on the planes saying, ‘If found, please contact us’, in a couple of languages.”

Japan is desperately trying to generate interest in its conventional space programme. There have been several rocket launch failures and recent media reports have cast doubt on the prospects of the GX rocket – a project that has encountered wrangling over which government ministry should be in charge of which section of the fuselage.

The paper aircraft are to be constructed from a heat-proofed paper able to withstand high temperatures on reentry. The paper will also be chemically fortified to survive the enormous speeds at which the planes will be travelling as they are pulled into the Earth’s orbit and breach the outer atmosphere.

In recent experiments by the Japan Origami Airplane Association, the prototypes have withstood speeds of Mach 7 and temperatures of 300C before disintegrating. The design – not unlike the US Space Shuttle – is also calculated to minimise the destructive effects of reentry. There is serious scientific intent behind the plan. Japan believes that if the paper planes are successful, they may open possibilities of using softer, lighter materials for constructing spacecraft.

Japan’s recent relationship with outer space has been lively. In December, the Government was asked its position on the existence of UFOs. The Chief Cabinet Secretary, Nobutaka Machimura, said aliens were “definitely” out there.