After its invention in 1974, the Rubik’s Cube rocketed to popularity, becoming one of the most talked about toys of the 1980s around the world. Many people don’t realize it was an unassuming Hungarian professor and architect, Ernő Rubik, who invented the cube, not a major global corporation.
Rubik actually invented his famous cube quite by accident while seeking a simple way to explain three-dimensional geometry to his architecture students. But it quickly became a sensation, first as a toy, and later within academic and mathematical circles as the ultimate manipulative puzzle challenge.
The Life and Career of Ernő Rubik
Born in 1944 in Budapest, Hungary at the height of World War II, Rubik spent his youth studying the intricacies of space, specifically how objects intersect with space and time.
His father was a flight engineer at the Estergom airplane factory, and his mother, a noted poet in Hungary at the time. Rubik studied sculpture at the Technical University in Budapest and then architecture at the Academy of Applied Arts and Design, where he returned as a professor after a brief stint as an architect.
It didn’t take long after Rubik built the first prototype of the Rubik’s Cube in 1974 for him to realize he was on to something. In fact, he applied for a patent on the design in early 1975. By 1977, the Rubik’s Cube was manufactured first in Hungary, but quickly gained popularity in Europe as it made its way to the United States and elsewhere by 1980.
The toy quickly became a worldwide sensation, and it soon captured the attention of mathematicians and other academics because of its complexity.
The wild success of the Rubik’s Cube propelled Rubik’s life in a new direction. He became editor of a game puzzle journal in the early 1980s, and later founded the Rubik Studio, where he designed furniture and games.
He remained at the Academy and received full tenure in 1987, creating the International Rubik Foundation with the intent of supporting talented young engineers and designers. He became president of the Hungarian Engineering Academy in 1990.
The Legacy of the Rubik’s Cube
The Rubik’s Cube consists of 26 small interlocking cubes that rotate on a central access that allows the user to manipulate it by twisting the horizontal and vertical planes.
The outer perimeter of the cube is composed of nine colored cube faces in three rows of three each. The original configuration consists of a single color per each nine-cubed side (yellow, white, orange, blue, red, and green). When the user twists the cube out of this arrangement, the goal is to return the cube to its original positioning. Given that there are more than 43 quintillion possible solutions, this is much more difficult than it may appear. According to popular lore, it initially took Rubik a month to solve his own puzzle.
Once the Rubik’s Cube became a worldwide craze, it wasn’t long before solving it turned into a competitive event. Budapest hosted the first world championship in 1982, where the winner solved the puzzle in less than 23 seconds.
The global quest to master the Rubik’s Cube continued across the decades and attracted quite a following. Most recently, an international team of mathematicians used a bank of computers at Google to find the fewest number of moves to solve the puzzle, the magic number being 20. Rubik contributed a variety of other puzzles to the craze, including Rubik’s Revenge (a 4 x 4 x 4 puzzle) and Rubik’s Snake.
Today, Rubik continues to reside in Hungary, and is somewhat of a recluse. But he still makes the occasional appearance at Rubik’s Cube competitive events (now commonly known as “cubing”) and continues to work in video game development and invent new challenges, such as the Rubik’s 360, a manipulative puzzle featuring six balls trapped within three transparent plastic spheres.
Sources
Butler, Phillip. 2010 (October 19). “Hungary’s Most Famous Toy Inventor.” Argophilia. Retrieved on May 13, 2011, from http://www.argophilia.com/news/hungarian-toy-inventor-rubik/2322/
Fildes, Jonathan. 2010 (August 11). “Rubik’s Cube Quest for Speedy Solution Comes to an End.” BBC News. Retrieved on May 13, 2011, from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10929159
Jamieson, Alastair. 2009 (January 31). “Rubik’s Cube Inventor is Back with Rubik’s 360.” The Telegraph. Retrieved on May 13, 2011, from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/4412176/Rubiks-Cube-inventor-is-back-with-Rubiks-360.html
Nadler, John. 2007 (October 9). “Squaring Up to the Rubik’s Cube.” Time Magazine. Retrieved on May 13, 2011, from http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1669535,00.html
Pearson Education. 2007. “Erno Rubik: Inventor.” Information Please Database. Retrieved on May 13, 2011, from http://www.infoplease.com/biography/var/ernorubik.html