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| Rubik's cube. a 40 years old toy. |
Rubik's Cube is a 3-D combination 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 Toy Corp. in 1980 via
businessman Tibor Laczi and Seven Towns founder Tom Kremer, and won the German
Game of the Year special award for Best Puzzle that year. As of January 2009,
350 million cubes had been 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, each of one of six solid colours: white,
red, blue, orange, green, and yellow. In currently sold models, white is
opposite yellow, blue is opposite green, and orange is opposite red, and the
red, white and blue are arranged in that order in a clockwise arrangement. On
early cubes, the position of the colours varied from cube to cube. An internal
pivot mechanism enables each face to turn independently, thus mixing up the
colours. For the puzzle to be solved, each face must be returned to consisting
of one colour. Similar puzzles have now been produced with various numbers of
sides, dimensions, and stickers, not all of them by Rubik.
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| Erno Rubik is 70 years old today. |
Ernő Rubik is a Hungarian inventor,
architect and professor of architecture. He is best known for the invention of mechanical
puzzles including Rubik's Cube (1974), Rubik's Magic, Rubik's Magic: Master
Edition, Rubik's Snake.
While Rubik grew to fame based on the
Rubik's Cube and his other puzzles, much of his recent work involves the
promotion of science in education. Rubik is involved with several organizations
such as Beyond Rubik's Cube, the Rubik Learning Initiative and the Judit Polgar
Foundation all of whose aim is to engage students in science, mathematics, and problem
solving at a young age.
