Enro Rubik
Alexander G Bell
Charles Babbage
Charles Goodyear
Guglielmo Marconi
John Logie Baird
Hernry Ford
Nikola Tesla
Wright Brothers
Archimedes
Enro Rubik
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| There is
only one correct answer and 43 quintillion wrong ones. God's algorithm is the
name that awaits the answer that solves in the least number of moves; and one
eighth of the world's population has has laid hands on The Cube, the most
popular puzzle in history and the colourful brainchild of Enro Rubik.
Enro Rubik was born in Budapest, Hungary during World War II. His mother was a poet, his father an aircraft engineer who started a company to build gliders. Enro Rubik studied sculpture in college, but after graduating he went back to learn architecture at a small college called the Academy of Applied Arts and Design. He remained there after his studies to teach interior design. Rubik's initial attraction to inventing the Cube, was not in producing the best selling toy puzzle in history. It was the structural design problem (how could the blocks move independently without falling apart) that interested Rubik. In Rubik's Cube, twenty six individual little cubes or Cubies make up the big Cube, each layer of nine cubies can twist and the layers can overlap (any three squares in a row, except diagonally, can join a new layer) Rubik's initial attempt to use elastic bands failed, his solution was to have the blocks hold themselves together by their shape. Rubik handcarved and assembled the little Cubies together. He marked each side of the big Cube with adhesive paper of a different colour, and started twisting. That was how the Cube as a puzzle, was invented in the spring of 1974, when the twenty nine year old Enro Rubik discovered it was not so easy to realign the colours to match on all six sides. He was not sure he would ever be able to return his invention to it's original position. He theorized that by randomly twisting the Cube he would never be able to fix it in a lifetime, which later turns out to be more then correct. He begin working out a solution, starting with aligning the eight corner Cubies. He discovered certain sequences of moves for rearranging just a few Cubies at a time, within a month he had the puzzle solved and an amazing journey lay ahead. Rubik's Cube®was first called the Magic Cube (Buvuos Kocka) in Hungary, it was renamed Rubik's Cube. This was because the puzzle had not been patented internationally within a year deadline of the originally patent. The patent laws then prevented the possibility of an international patent. Ideal Toy wanted at least a recognizable name that could be copyrighted, of course that arrangement put Rubik in the spotlight. Rubik became the first self-made millionaire from the communist block The eighties and Rubik's Cube went well together. Devotees or Cubic Rubes, formed clubs to play and study solutions. At the world championship in Budapest (June 1982), a sixteen year old Vietnamese high school student from Los Angeles, Minh Thai, won by unscrambling a Cube in 22.95 seconds. He is considered the official world record-holder. Unofficial speed records have figures as low as ten seconds. No one has solved the puzzle in less than fifty-two moves, but twenty-two is considered possible. |
