Rubik's Cube - History of Rubik's Cube

In a world of brain-teasers, puzzles, and mind games, the Rubik's cube remains the most famous of the bunch. Invented in 1974 by a Hungarian professor of Architecture, Erno Rubik, the cube was once known as the magic cube. Although now known widely as a game, it's original purpose was for science. Erno wanted to be able to design a cube that contained all moving parts without falling apart. He succeeded in the Rubik's cube!

Once it had been created however, Erno noticed that it could also act as a mind puzzle. The first time he scrambled the cube he thought it would be unsolvable. However, after a months time, Erno was finally able to solve the first Rubik's cube.

Designed as a cube, with three rows and columns able to be moved and twisted, each face was covered with nine stickers. Each face of the cube contained one of the six solid colors: red, blue, white, orange, yellow and green. The purpose of the game was to be able to rearrange the colors of a scrambled cube so that each of the six faces contained only one solid color. This was an extremely difficult feat, as there are over 40,000 ways to arrange the cube!

From the 1980s, this game has been a huge hit with over 350 million cubes being sold by January 2009. This feat gained the Rubik's cube the title of the "Worlds Top-Selling Puzzle Game".

During the 30 years from its development, Rubik's Cube enthusiasts developed standard protocols for solving even the most difficult cube permutations. Today, these protocols are followed religiously by competitors in the worldwide Rubik's cube speed cubing competitions. Most of these allow for solving the cube using less than 100 moves.

Today, the Rubik's cube remains an incredibly popular puzzle throughout the world. Although many still struggle to solve their first ever cube, the competition for speed cubing remains high, with the current record being set at 4.90 seconds. Other Rubik's cube advancements, including a massive 17 x 17 x 17 cube has been solved in under 8 hours. Despite these seemingly impossible speed records, the Rubik's cube remains a fun and entertaining device to engage the minds of people throughout the world.