Science

July 13, 2007: Happy Birthday Erno Rubik, inventor of Rubik’s Cube

by William Atkins

Saturday, 14 July 2007

Hungarian mathematician and inventor Erno Rubik was born on July 13, 1944. He is 63 years old. Rubik invented the widely popular mechanical puzzle known as the Rubik’s Cube.

Science Discussions

The Rubik’s Cube is a 3 inch by 3 inch by 3 inch cube. It consists of 26 smaller cubes that rotate on a central axis. In its completed form, one different color appears on each side. Before that, however, a person must try to rotate any side to rearrange the colors so that each side is composed of only one solid color.

Each of the six square sides consists of nine differently colored cubed faces in three rows with three faces in each row. When it is arranged randomly, there are 43 quintillion possible configurations of it—a billion billion different possibilities, or a one with 18 zeros following it.

Rubik was born in Budapest, Hungary. After graduating in 1967 as an architectural engineer from the Technical University in Budapest, Rubik took sculpting and interior architecture for his post-graduate studies. He then worked for a few years as an architect, before becoming a professor at the Budapest College of Applied Arts.

In 1974, Rubik invented what he called the Magic Cube. It was first produced in 1977 by Politechnika, a Hungarian toy company. In 1978, Ideal Toys began to produce his toy. In 1979, the England-based Seven Towns company helped to market the toy being made by U.S.-based Ideal Toys. The toy got its current and most famous name—Rubik’s Cube—in 1980. In the first three years of being sold as the Rubik’s Cube, around 100 million of them were sold.

In 1983, Rubik became self-employed in his business called Rubik Studios. He designed games and furniture.

A few year later, he returned to his duties as a professor. Rubik became the president of the Hungarian Engineering Academy in 1990. He is currently working on developing video games and architectural pursuits.

The website of Rubik’s Cube is: http://www.rubiks.com/.

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