Seven Towns licensed the Rubik Cube invention from Professor Rubik for worldwide distribution. Laczi Tibor and Tom Kremer of Seven Towns Ltd., London. The two men who were most responsible for making the cube an international success were Dr. 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.
After three years of development, the first cubes were available on toy store shelves in Budapest. Over the next few years, Rubik worked with a manufacturer to allow production of the cube on a mass scale. When he showed the working prototype to his students, it was an immediate hit. Professor Rubik created the cube as a teaching aid for his students to help them recognize three-dimensional spatial relationships. Apparently, it was also independently designed by Terutoshi Ishige, an engineer from Japan, who received a Japanese patent in 1976. This toy was a pyramid that had movable pieces that were to be lined up according to color.Įrno Rubik, an architect and professor at the University of Budapest developed the first working prototype of the Rubik's cube in 1974. The early 1970s brought with it a device called the Pyraminx, which This toy achieved a moderate level of popularity in the United States. In the 1960s, Parker Bothers introduced another cube puzzle type toy called Instant Insanity. The Mayblox puzzle was created by British mathematician Percy MacMahon in the early 1920s. Some early precursors to the Rubik's cube include devices such as the Katzenjammer and the Mayblox puzzle. There are various puzzles that involve colored square tiles and colored cubes. The goal was to place the discs on the pegs in the correct order. This puzzle was made up of three pegs and a number of discs with different sizes. In 1883, French mathematician Edouard Lucas created the Tower of Hanoi puzzle. This puzzle involved numerical tiles that had to be placed in order and became extremely popular in the early twentieth century. Sometime around 1870, the famous 15 Puzzle was introduced, reportedly by Sam Lloyd. In 1857, the Irish mathematician Sir William Hamilton invented the Icosian puzzle.
When the printing press was invented, complete books of mathematical and mechanical problems designed specifically for recreation were circulated.įrom these early riddles and word problems, toy puzzles were naturally developed. This was first described by Italian mathematician Girolamo Carolano (Cardan) in 1550. The Chinese have a ring puzzle that is thought to have been developed during the second century a.d. Some of the earliest puzzles date back to the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Puzzle makers have been creating problems for people to solve for centuries. The spring exerts just the right pressure to hold all the pieces in place while giving enough flexibility for a smooth and forgiving function. The central cubes are fixed with a spring and rivet and retain all the surrounding pieces. These tabs are shaped to fit along a curved track that is created by the backs of the other pieces. Each piece has an internal tab that is retained by the center cubes and trapped by the surrounding pieces. The cube maintains its shape because the corners and edges hold each other in place and are retained by the center cubes. This allows them to move around the center cubes. The corners and edges are not fixed to anything. When the cube is taken apart it can be seen that the center cubes are each connected by axles to an inner core. The center cubes are each fixed and only rotate in place. While it appears that all of the small faces can be moved, only the corners and edges can actually move. In its solved state, it has six faces, each made up of nine small square faces of the same color. The Rubik's cube appears to be made up of 26 smaller cubes. Today sales continue to be over 500,000 cubes sold world wide each year. The cube was extremely popular during the 1980s, and at its peak between 19, 200 million cubes were sold world wide. The primary method of manufacture involves injection molding of the various component pieces, then subsequent assembly, labeling, and packaging. It is a cube-shaped device made up of smaller cube pieces with six faces having differing colors.
Rubik's cube is a toy puzzle designed by Erno Rubik during the mid-1970s.