Every invention has an official birth date. For the Cube this date is 1974 when the first working prototype came into being and a patent application was initially drafted. The place was Budapest, the capital of Hungary. The inventor’s name is now a household word, Rubik’s Cube.
Although 1974 marks the inauguration of the Cube, the processes that led to the invention began a few years earlier. At the time, Erno Rubik was a lecturer at the
Department of Interior Design at the Academy of Applied Arts and Crafts in Budapest.
He had a passionate interest in geometry, in the study of 3D forms, in construction and in exploring the hidden possibilities of combination of forms and materials, not just in theory, but also in practice.
In the course of his teaching, Erno Rubik preferred to communicate his ideas by the use of actual models, made from paper, cardboard, wood or plastic, challenging his students to experiment by manipulating clearly constructed and easily interpreted forms. It was the realisation that even the simplest elements, cleverly duplicated and manipulated, yield an abundance of multiple forms that was the first step on the long road that led finally to the Cube.
When the Cube was complete, Erno Rubik demonstrated it to his students and let some of his friends play with it. The effect was instantaneous. Once somebody laid his hands on the Cube it was difficult to get it back! The compulsive interest of friends and students in the Cube caught its creator completely by surprise and it was months before any thought was given to the possibility of producing it on an industrial scale.
During 1978, without any promotion or publicity, the Cube began very slowly to make its way through the hands of fascinated youths into homes, playgrounds and schools. The word of mouth spread and by the beginning of 1979 there were enthusiastic circles of Cube devotees in various parts of Hungary.
Undeterred by the universal rejection, spurred on by his firm belief in the exceptional quality of the toy, Tom Kremer, now armed with a convincing marketing plan, continued his search for a viable partner. After many disappointments, he succeeded in persuading Stewart Sims, Vice President of Marketing of the Ideal Toy Corporation, to come to Hungary, to see with his own eyes the Cube in play. It was now September 1979, by which time the Cube has gained a sufficient degree of popularity to be seen occasionally in the street, on trams, in the cafes, each time in the hand of someone turning and twisting and completely absorbed. After five days of negotiations between a sceptical American capitalist and an obstinate communist organization largely ignorant of the operation of a free market, with Laczi and Kremer holding desperately the two sides together, an order for one million cubes was signed amidst much handshaking and great relief all round.
The challenge of trying to master the Cube, to be able to restore all of its six sides to the original colours seemed to have a mesmeric effect on an amazing variety of individuals right across age, occupation, wealth and social standing. Grandmothers, bank managers, baseball players, pilots, librarians, park attendants could be seen working away at their Cubes at any hour of the day. In restaurants the Cube would feature on tables side by side with salt and pepper pots, handled with greater frequency than either. But it was the young, schoolboys and students, who were in the vanguard of what was fast becoming a massive movement that swept through the world. They were the ones who proved most adept at solving the puzzle, they were the ones to form special cubists clubs, to organise competitions, to suffer from Rubik’s wrist playing continuously for hours and days with an object that simply could not put down.
But now, in its second incarnation, the Cube is part of a family of puzzles and games which bear the stamp of the genius who created the greatest three dimensional puzzle the world has ever known.
Erno Rubik has not changed much over the years. Working closely with Seven Towns, he is still deeply engaged in creating new games and puzzles, and remains one of the principal beneficiaries of what proved to be a spectacularly successful invention.
