Happy 40th birthday, Rubik’s Cube!
I’ve practically grown up with the toy, which I first encountered around 1981 when my elementary school classmate Matt dazzled us with his ability to solve it in mere minutes while the rest of us struggled to master the three by three inch cube. We didn’t have the advantage of online instructions or videos to give us helpful tips, since we didn’t have the World Wide Web yet. So puzzle-loving kids and adults invested hours solemnly twisting the cube segments over and over again. This was at the height of the toy’s popularity in the US, which quickly waned but never quite died.
Today the toy and its inventor are celebrated in Beyond Rubik’s Cube, a traveling exhibition at the Liberty Science Center in New Jersey. Born 70 years ago on July 13, 1944, Hungarian Ernő Rubik is the man behind the Cube. His mother, Magdolna Szántó, was a poet and his father, Ernő Sr., was an aircraft engineer known for his glider designs. He said of his father: “Beside him I learned a lot about work in the sense of a value-creating process which has a target, and a positive result too.” (1) Young Ernő studied sculpture, design, and architecture in Budapest and eventually became a professor of architecture.
In 1974 he thought up the idea for the Rubik’s Cube in order to help teach three-dimensional design to his students. Initially, he created a three inch by three inch by three inch rotating cube out of wood. “There was a workshop in the school, and I just used wood as a material because it is very simple to use and you don’t need any sophisticated machines. So I made it by just using my hands—cutting the wood, drilling holes, using elastic bands and those kind of very simple things.” (2) The following year he applied for a patent, which he received in 1977. Since this was Soviet-era Hungary, when the “Iron Curtain” divided Eastern and Western Europe, Rubik’s options were limited for manufacturing and marketing his invention. He worked with a small Hungarian company Politechnika to start selling colorful plastic versions of his “Bűvös Kocka,” translated into English as “Magic Cubes.”
Rubik’s big breakthrough came when an expat Hungarian entrepreneur took the Magic Cube to the Nuremberg Toy Fair in Germany in 1979. There Tom Kremer, who owned a games and toys company called Seven Towns Ltd., saw the Cube and believed it could be a great success on the toy market if he could just find the right company to license it. Fluent in Hungarian and English, Kremer negotiated a deal with the Ideal Toy Company, who renamed it the “Rubik’s Cube” and launched it on the international market in 1980.
The Rubik’s Cube was an immediate worldwide sensation, winning many Toy of the Year awards in 1980 and 1981. Approximately 100 million were sold by 1982, but almost as quickly as it rose to fame the Cube seemed doomed to become a one-hit wonder. By 1986, The New York Times reported it had been “retired to the attic, the garbage heap and, with a bow to its elegance and ingeniousness, to the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.” (3) However, the colorful toy never really disappeared, and over time it morphed into a popular culture icon. Today the number of Rubik’s Cubes sold worldwide is estimated at about 350 million.
In Hilton, New York, Northwood Elementary School students are petitioning to get the Cube inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame. “The project started in Jenny Ames’ and Julie Fiege’s sixth grade classes in November… Students worked in groups to pick a toy that they thought should be inducted, conducted research and then presented their argument to a panel of judges…The presentation included criteria set by the Hall of Fame—icon status, longevity, discovery and innovation. The Rubik’s Cube won! So now the entire C Core—six teachers and 160 students—is working to get the Cube nominated for its 40th birthday this year.” (4) Hopefully, the Rubik’s Cube might win induction into the Toy Hall of Fame in November also to honor Ernő Rubik’s 70th birthday.
For teachers and families, there is now an educational program called “You Can Do the Rubik’s Cube” focusing on math learning and 21st Century Skills. As Ernő Rubik said, “If you are curious, you’ll find the puzzles around you. If you are determined, you will solve them.” (5)
Sources:
(1) http://www.create2009.europa.eu/ambassadors/profiles/erno_rubik.html
(2) http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/10/tech/rubiks-cube-inventor/
(3) http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/26/nyregion/rubiks-redux-a-colorful-cube-puzzles-anew.html
(4) http://www.hilton.k12.ny.us/news/RubiksCube.htm
(5) http://rubiks.com/history
