This paper provides a basic understanding of the Rubik’s Cube and shows its mechanical art from the aspects of origin and development, characteristics, research status and especially its mechanical engineering design, as well as making a vision for the application in mechanism. As a classic brain-training toy well known to the public, Rubik’s Cube was used for scientific research and technology development by many scholars. Hessler said speed cubers averaged about 50 his lowest was 31.Rubik’s Cube is a widely popular mechanical puzzle that has attracted attention around the world because of its unique characteristics. But speed cubers do not have time to think about the elegance of economy implied by minimizing moves.
“They’ve seized whole 747s full of illegal knockoffs,” he said.Įxperts have calculated that a cube could be solved in as few as 20 moves, no matter how it is scrambled.
Hoffman said one billion to 2.5 billion cubes had been manufactured, assuming there were five counterfeits for every legitimate one sold. He said the cube had changed that thinking. “Traditionally, the puzzle section in the toy business is very narrow,” he said, “and they don’t believe it’s possible to make a business. Rubik said he had thought that toy manufacturers would pigeonhole it as a puzzle. “I had a feeling about the intellectual value of the cube” early on, he said, adding that items with intellectual value can be a hard sell in a material world. Rubik said he had not imagined when the ink on the patent was fresh that the cube would become so universal. The only noise was the cube, clicking like bad dentures in a cartoon. Hessler did it in a seemingly effortless 9.69 seconds of twisting and pivoting. Hessler, 23, is a former United States speed cubing champion, whose fastest time unscrambling a standard three-by-three-by-three cube was 6.94 seconds.Īt the science center, Mr. Conrad/The New York Timesĭo not expect him to face off against a speed cuber like Rowe Hessler, a bowling-alley manager from Riverhead, N.Y. Brooks wore a blindfold while competing against a cube-solving robot, which was still outmatched by the speed cuber. “If I have a child, I call it ‘my child,’ not ‘Rubik’s boy’ or ‘Rubik’s girl.’ Naturally, after 40 years, I have a strong relationship with my cube.” “From my mouth, it sounds strange to call it ‘Rubik’s cube,’ ” Mr. Rubik said as he previewed the exhibition this week.
That could not have happened to the cube’s inventor, Erno Rubik, 69.
Hoffman said that sounded like an homage to the 2009 film “Duplicity,” in which spies played by Julia Roberts and Clive Owen realize who they are because they are both carrying Rubik’s cube key chains. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who has leaked intelligence secrets, told two journalists he had arranged to meet that they would recognize him outside a restaurant in Hong Kong because he would have a Rubik’s cube in his hand. In the 40 years since it was invented, the cube has made some intriguing cameo appearances. And those unfathomable huge numbers in the first paragraph are still quintillions. The typical Rubik’s cube still has nine squares on six sides, and the same eye-popping colors. Lately it has undergone a resurrection in a world in which engineers and computers can generate helpful algorithms that would-be cube solvers can share with each other. In 1986, The New York Times said the cube had been “retired to the attic, the garbage heap and, with a bow to its elegance and ingeniousness, to the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.” The cube went on to become the must-have toy of 19.īy 1982, the cube was so last year, doomed to Hula-Hoop faddishness. Those truths - especially the second, maddeningly frustrating one - have been known since soon after the modish, Mondrianish plastic object was invented in 1974.