In 1974, Erno Rubik, an associate professor at the Budapest University of Art and Design, looking for a vivid way to explain the basics of the mathematical theory of groups to his students, created a wooden structure with 27 small cubes. To demonstrate the mutual movement of elements of one group, without violating their group unity, the faces of the cubes were painted in different colors.
Inspired by the design, Rubik began creating a mechanism that would simultaneously hold all the cubes and allow them to move in three planes. For this, a cylindrical tubular cross was placed on the place of the central cube, invisible from the outside, on which all external cubes were placed, in which fragments were cut from the inner side so that the cavity formed part of the cylinder.
Photo © jnsm.com.ua
This allowed all 27 dice to move freely, and only 54 outer edges had to be painted. January 30, 1975 Rubik received a Hungarian patent for his invention, which he called the "Magic Cube".
The industrial production of the Magic Cube began in 1977 and was later accidentally seen by the German entrepreneur Tibor Lazi, who in 1979 at the Nuremberg Toy Fair managed to interest him Kremer, the owner of the British company Seven Towns. His efforts signed a contract with Ideal Toy Corporation, which began distributing toys in the United States and offered to change its name.
On February 10, 1980, the Rubik's Cube debuted at the International Toy Fair in New York and began its triumphal march around the world — in the first two years alone, 100,000,000 officially manufactured toys and as many more fakes were sold. In 1980, the Rubik's Cube was recognized as the best toy in Hungary, the United States, Great Britain, France and Germany, and its production, due to the inability of Hungarian enterprises to meet demand, was placed in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Brazil.