History - I

The Rubik's cube was invented in 1974 by the Hungarian professor of architecture Ernö Rubik. Some people may remember of it as the Magic Cube since at the beginning its inventor named it "Büvös Kocka", the Hungarian name for Magic Cube.

The Hungarian cube was firstly a success in its native country, and then it became a real triumph in the whole world. The object had been conceived at first in order to develop the faculties of visualization of the pupils in architecture. It turned out afterward that the educational dimension of the Rubik's Cube was much more important... It is indeed a natural and material representation of some mathematical principles.

Rubik's initial attraction to inventing the Cube was not in producing the best-selling toy puzzle in history. The structural design problem interested Rubik; he asked, "How could the blocks move independently without falling apart?" In Rubik's Cube, twenty-six individual little cubes or cubies make up the big Cube. Each layer of nine cubies can twist and the layers can overlap. Any three squares in a row, except diagonally, can join a new layer. Rubik's initial attempt to use elastic bands failed, his solution was to have the blocks hold themselves together by their shape. Rubik hand-carved and assembled the little cubies together. He marked each side of the big Cube with adhesive paper of a different color, and started twisting.

That was how the Cube as a puzzle, was invented in the spring of 1974, when the twenty-nine year old Rubik discovered it was not so easy to realign the colors to match on all six sides. He was not sure he would ever be able to return his invention to its original position. He theorized that by randomly twisting the Cube he would never be able to fix it in a lifetime, which later turns out to be more than correct. He began working out a solution, starting with aligning the eight corner cubies. He discovered certain sequences of moves for rearranging just a few cubies at a time. Within a month, he had the puzzle solved and an amazing journey lay ahead...

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