Rubik’s Cube

Wed 9 June 2010

Rubik’s Cube

Filed under: #satscene —— Sylvia @ 19:47

On the 5th of June 1982, the first Rubik’s Cube World Championship was held in Budapest. The Rubik’s Cube, a 3x3x3 mechanical puzzle, was invented in 1974 by a Hungarian professor and it soon became a global craze. In 1981, a 12-year-old schoolboy from England wrote “You Can Do the Cube” with instructions for solving the puzzle. The book sold 1.5 million copies.

The World Championship, Budapest 1982

The cubes were randomly shuffled by a computer, and were brought on stage in a sealed suitcase. The cube was placed on a small pad with with a photo sensitive diode at the bottom. The time started counting when the cube was picked up, and stopped after the cube has been placed back on the table. Before the timer started counting the time, each contestant was allowed to lift the cube and look at it for 15 seconds. Then the cube was returned to the pad. If the cube broke into pieces during twisting the competitor was given another chance. However, two break ups resulted in disqualification in that particular round (which happened to the champion of Finland). The best time out of three attempts determined the winners.

Minh Thai from the USA won first place with a time of 22.95 seconds. The current record is 9.21 seconds, held by Australian Feliks Zemdegs.

And on the 5th of June 2010, lightning-fast Twitter users brought us these amazing images and every single one was taken in under a second. (I don’t know what I would have done if one of you had submitted a time-lapse photograph this week. Thank you for not making my life difficult.)

Take a look: