Rubik's Cube

The Rubik's Cube is a 3-D mechanical puzzle invented in 1974 by Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Ernő Rubik. It is widely considered to be the world's best-selling toy.

Rubik's actual purpose for coming up with the cube was solving the structural problem of moving the parts independently without the entire mechanism falling apart. He did not realize that he had created a puzzle until he scrambled it the first time. It took Rubik a month to restore his cube to its original set up.

Ernő Rubik applied for a patent for his puzzle on January 30, 1975, and obtained Hungarian patent HU170062 later in the year.

Rubik introduced the toy as the Magic Cube in Hungary, named for his theory of "magic cubology," but the Ideal Toy Corp. dubbed it the Rubik's Cube in 1979.

Packaging of Rubik's Cube, 1980–Ideal Toy Corp.. By Jpacarter 

The Rubik's Cube reached its height of mainstream popularity in the 1980s. It was the bestselling toy in the world in 1981. In the early 2000s interest in the Cube began increasing again and in the USA sales doubled between 2001 and 2003.

A number of books on how to solve the puzzle were published and became bestsellers in 1981. The most popular of these was The Simple Solution to Rubik's Cube by James G. Nourse, which sold over 1.5 million copies. Other popular books on the topic included You Can Do the Cube by Patrick Bossert, and Rubik's Revenge by Don Taylor.

In 2008, Rubik's Cubes sales hit a high of 15 million globally thanks to a scene in the movie The Pursuit of Happyness.

There are 54 colored squares on a Rubik’s Cube — nine on each of the six sides

There are 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 different color combinations possible on a Rubik's Cube. That's a greater number than inches that light travels in a century.

Even though a Rubik's Cube has over 43 billion billion configurations, no configuration is more than 20 moves away from being solved, and 99.99999% of all configurations can be solved in less than 20 moves.

The first World Rubik Cube championship was held in Budapest on June 5, 1982. Nineteen National Champions took part. Minh Thai, the US Champion, won by solving the Cube in 22.95 seconds.

First Rubik's Cube World Championship,  Stamp of Hungary, 1982

The world record, in competitive conditions, has grown progressively lower. Lucas Etter, was the first person to solve a Rubik’s cube in less than 5 seconds in a sanctioned competition. The 15-year-old solved the cube in 4.904 seconds in 2015.

The current world record for solving a Rubik's Cube in competitive conditions is held by Max Park.  He achieved a time of 3.13 seconds at the Pride in Long Beach 2023 event in California, USA, on June 11, 2023. Park is autistic, and has used cubing to develop his social and fine motor skills.