The Rubik's Cube

The Rubik's Cube is a 3-D mechanical puzzle invented in 1974 by Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Ernő Rubik. Originally called the "Magic Cube", the puzzle was licensed by Rubik to be sold by Ideal Toys in 1980 and won the German Game of the Year special award for Best Puzzle that year. As of January 2009, 350 million cubes have sold worldwide making it the world's top-selling puzzle game. It is widely considered to be the world's best-selling toy.

In a classic Rubik's Cube, each of the six faces is covered by nine stickers, among six solid colours (traditionally white, red, blue, orange, green, and yellow). A pivot mechanism enables each face to turn independently, thus mixing up the colours. For the puzzle to be solved, each face must be a solid colour. Similar puzzles have now been produced with various numbers of stickers, not all of them by Rubik. The original 3×3×3 version celebrates its thirtieth anniversary in 2010.

History

Puzzle makers have been creating problems for people to solve for centuries. Some of the earliest puzzles date back to the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans. The Chinese have a ring puzzle that is thought to have been developed during the second century a.d. This was first described by Italian mathematician Girolamo Carolano (Cardan) in 1550. When the printing press was invented, complete books of mathematical and mechanical problems designed specifically for recreation were circulated.

From these early riddles and word problems, toy puzzles were naturally developed. In 1857, the Irish mathematician Sir William Hamilton invented the Icosian puzzle. Sometime around 1870, the famous 15 Puzzle was introduced, reportedly by Sam Lloyd. This puzzle involved numerical tiles that had to be placed in order and became extremely popular in the early twentieth century. In 1883, French mathematician Edouard Lucas created the Tower of Hanoi puzzle. This puzzle was made up of three pegs and a number of discs with different sizes. The goal was to place the discs on the pegs in the correct order.

There are various puzzles that involve colored square tiles and colored cubes. Some early precursors to the Rubik's cube include devices such as the Katzenjammer and the Mayblox puzzle. The Mayblox puzzle was created by British mathematician Percy MacMahon in the early 1920s. In the 1960s, Parker Bothers introduced another cube puzzle type toy called Instant Insanity. This toy achieved a moderate level of popularity in the United States. The early 1970s brought with it a device called the Pyraminx, which was invented by Uwe Meffert. This toy was a pyramid that had movable pieces that were to be lined up according to color.

Erno Rubik, an architect and professor at the University of Budapest developed the first working prototype of the Rubik's cube in 1974. He received a Hungarian patent in 1975. Apparently, it was also independently designed by Terutoshi Ishige, an engineer from Japan, who received a Japanese patent in 1976. Professor Rubik created the cube as a teaching aid for his students to help them recognize three-dimensional spatial relationships. When he showed the working prototype to his students, it was an immediate hit.

Over the next few years, Rubik worked with a manufacturer to allow production of the cube on a mass scale. After three years of development, the first cubes were available on toy store shelves in Budapest. While the cube remained popular in Hungry, the political atmosphere of the time made it difficult for it to be introduced in the United States. The two men who were most responsible for making the cube an international success were Dr. Laczi Tibor and Tom Kremer of Seven Towns Ltd., London. Seven Towns licensed the Rubik Cube invention from Professor Rubik for worldwide distribution. Dr. Tibor worked within Hungry to convince bureaucrats to allow the technology out of the country. Kremer found a United States toy maker, the Ideal Toy company, who was willing to help market the product. The product was an immediate hit, and during the 1980s, over 200 million cubes were sold. Around 1983, the frenzied popularity of the cube began to wane and sales slowed drastically. It remained in small scale production until Seven Towns took over the marketing, and licensed the Rubik Cube to the Oddzon Company for the United States market in 1995. Since that time sales have steadily increased to over 500,000 units a year.