Where did the cube come from and how did it get in the hands of people across the world? Who came up with the idea of the cube and why might he have wanted to make such a device? How and why has the cube's popularity changed over time? In this section we explore these questions to gain greater insight as to how the cube came to be what it is today.

The Early Years

Inventor Erno Rubik
source: http://www.webenetics.com/hungary/businessandpolitics.htm

Every well-known artifact is attributed to an inventor and the case of the Rubik's Cube is no different. While the mathematical underpinnings of the Rubik’s puzzle date back several centuries, the cube as seen today is said to have been invented in 1974 by Hungarian Erno Rubik. He was 29. Born in Budapest during the World War II years, Erno Rubik studied sculpture in college. After graduation, he returned to school to study architecture at the Academy of Applied Arts and Crafts. He later stayed at the school to teach in the department of Interior Design. Obsessed with 3-D geometry, Rubik set out to create not only a challenging puzzle but also an object of high aesthetic value. While the unique movement requirements of the cube’s pieces created something of a design challenge (see Technical Design), Rubik filed for a Hungarian patent on the cube in early 1975. Two years later it was accepted as patent #HU00170062 and the cube began its distribution in Hungary.

Page from patent application.

The Rubik’s cube’s original name was Buvuos Kocka (“magic cube” in Hungarian). Due to international patent laws regarding allowed time between national and international patents, the cube itself could not be issued an international patent. Desperate for at least a unique name to patent, the inventor’s name was attached and the puzzle became known as the “Rubik’s Cube”.

The Cube Spreads

While perhaps a neat toy, the cube was not immediately successful outside of Hungary. A stepping point for its popularity was the cube’s “discovery” by German businessman Tibor Laczi on one of his trips to Hungary. He is said to have fallen in love with it and thought it a potential consumer product. The first to introduce the cube to the rest of the world, Laczi gave the cube international exposure by demonstrating it at the Nuremberg Toy Fair. But instead of signing up to be an actual presenter, Laczi simply walked around the fair playing with the cube and caught the eye of British toy expert Tom Kremer. At the time Kremer owned a product development and licensing company called Seven Towns Ltd. based in London. He and his company were well known in the international toy industry. That day, Kremer and Laczi made a pact to introduce the cube to the international market.

The two men faced many challenges in their quest to increase the cube's popularity. Toy companies said it was too difficult to produce, too quiet to be entertaining, requiring too much thought to be fun, unable to be successfully advertised on tv and "a challenge for the esoteric academic mind rather than a puzzle meant for children, youths and the general public" source.

Despite the many rejections, Kremer continued his search with the belief that the cube's popularity was guaranteed as long as he could get it into the hands of consumers. He tried a new marketing plan, and eventually convinced Stewart Sims of the Ideal Toy Corporation to visit Hungary to witness the cube's popularity for himself. It was 1979 and the cube had found significant time to spread throughout the city including into public areas such as cafes and public transportation systems. After days of negotiations between communist Hungary, capitalist America and Kremer and Laczi furiously mediating between the two, Ideal Toy was sold one million cubes and exclusive rights to the Rubik's Cube name.

Popularity Rockets

It turns out that Tom Kremer's hunch was right. Once the cube entered the marketplace the new fad was contagious. The initial order of one million cubes was found to be not nearly enough to meet demand and the slow production of communist Hungary left the world with a shortage of their new favorite pastime. Interest in the cube grew exponentially and production of the cube was expanded to include Hong Kong, Taiwan, Costa Rica and Brazil.

The cube's popularity reached across the globe and included people of all ages, professions, and backgrounds. In 1980 the first MIT cube fan club was inaugurated. In 1981, the cube entered the New York Museum of Modern Art as an exhibit. In 1982 the first World Rubik's Championship competition was held in Budapest, Hungary and featured representatives from 17 countries around the world (see Cubers for more details on cubing competitions). Books were published describing how to solve the cube and became incredibly popular due to a world of frustrated fans. Unauthorized cube production hit the market but due to the cube's intricate technical design, they were often of poorer quality and kept people purchasing the real thing.

The Rubik's Cube was featured on the cover of Scientific American in March 1981, around the peak of its popularity. Included in the magazine was an article by Douglas Hofstadter, Professor of Cognitive Science and Computer Science (most famous for his Pulitzer Prize winning book, Godel, Escher, Bach - a metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll) about the cube. The article included a detailed mathematical analysis of how to solve the cube (as opposed to the group theory behind it) and interestingly observed that the turns of the cube are conserved following similar rules to that in particle physics (see solving the cube).

Scientific American cover, March 1981
source: http://www.chrisandkori.com

A second article by Hofstadter about the cube was published just over a year later in the July 1982 edition of Scientific American. Later the two would be included as chapters in his 1985 book Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern.

The Cube is Forgotten...But Not For Long

Most experts estimate 1983 as marking the end of the Rubik's Cube's popularity. The cube had made its way onto coffee tables in the majority of American homes, had become enormously popular on the international market, and people were started to get tired of it. Ideal Toy Corporation was purchased by CBS and CBS left the toy industry around 1985. Cubes were no longer available. The Rubik's Cube craze had come to an end.

But that would not be the cube's last appearance. Tom Kramer never gave up on the Rubik's Cube. His company Seven Towns bought all rights to the cube in 1985 and slowly reintroduced the cube in 1991 with no marketing at all. Sales were slow at first, but when American distributor Oddzon took over in 1995 a new generation of cubers started making the purchase. In 1996, over 300,000 cubes were sold in the United States alone and in August of 2003, the second Rubik's World Championships would be held, a long 21 years after the first.

And this time it looks like the cube might be here to stay. November 2005 marks the third world championship competition and the number of avid cubers around today implies that the Rubik's Cube will be around for years to come.

The Inventor Today

The popularity of the cube made Erno Rubik the first self-made millionaire from communist Hungary, where he continues to be one of the wealthiest men today. He has since established a foundation to financially aid upcoming Hungarian inventors. Additionally, he runs Rubik Studio, a furniture and toy designer. The studio has produced several new toys including the Rubik’s Snake, Rubik's Magic and Rubik's Domino and has plans to develop computer games in the future.

A Rubik's Snake
source: www.boardgames.com

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Posted at May 08/2005 11:55 PM:
Ashley Rayner: That patent image is really cool! Nice to see the development of such an icon.