History of Toys: Rubik's Rubik's Cube Witnesses the Power of the Market Economy


"From "Eastern Europe" to "New Europe" 20 Years of Transition and Looking Back", Jin Yan, Peking University Press, April 2011

Xu Xunlei

In general, it can be said that in the period of 2,500 years of human beings, the results of thoughts are getting richer and richer, and the scientific and technological achievements are getting richer and later. In ancient Greece, the ancient Roman era, the human mind has been on Mount Everest, and the Chinese people have left the shoulders of the giants to future generations. Thought depends on the head of wisdom, and technology depends not only on the wisdom of the brain, but also on the progress and accumulation of technical conditions, and on the looseness and correctness of the institutional environment.

This is a spring story. In the spring of 1978, a German entrepreneur named Lakshi, drinking coffee in Budapest, saw the coffee shop waiter playing a novelty toy cube ( >> enter: Rubik's Cube ) . Lakshi was immediately attracted to the third-order hexahedron. Moreover, the business entrepreneur’s mind immediately set off a business storm. The next day he called a German toy production company and suggested that the Rubik's cube be produced and sold in the West. He then contacted the inventor of the Rubik's Cube, Ene Rubik, a young professor of architecture and design in Hungary.

Many years later, when Lakshi was drinking coffee at a coffee shop, he would have remembered the first meeting with Rubik in Budapest that year. Rubik is dressed badly, and apparently looks like a poor professor living in a socialist country. Rubik’s mouth licked a cigarette, which was cheap smoke produced in Hungary. One of the strong thoughts of Lakshina at the moment is: I really should give him some money. But he resisted not doing that. He said to Rubik: "Let's work together, so you can earn millions!" He knows that he has a genius in his hand and will be a genius for invention.

Rubik was born in an uncommon family in 1944, his mother was a poet and his father was a glider designer. But his family did not go where he was rich. Because Hungary at that time was like that. As a professor, Rubik, it is normal to "wear badly" and smoke "cheap smoke."

But one's wisdom tends to emerge from poverty and stubbornly. Rubik has a high level of mathematical talent and is very interested in "space conversion." In the fall of 1974, in order to explain a mathematical theory to students, he assembled a cube of 26 wooden squares with 6 different colors. When he thought hard, he found a way to rotate these wooden squares along two vertical axes without falling apart.

When he disrupted the box, he spent a month to make all six faces into a single color. Now, in the international competition organized by the World Rubik's Cube Association, the Rubik's cube restoration speed record is 6.65 seconds. Rubik later calculated that there were about 430 billion changes after the Rubik's Cube was disrupted. In 1975, he introduced the Rubik's Cube to friends and students and was loved by people. He thought of submitting a patent application for an invention, but he did not receive much attention and the review was delayed. One year later, at the end of 1976, a Japanese person took the lead in obtaining a patent for a toy similar to Rubik's Cube. It was not until the last day of 1977 that the Hungarian Rubik obtained his own patent license. Moreover, under such social conditions, there is no application for international patents at all. This is still good. In some countries where the philosophy of struggle and the practice of struggle have reached a peak, even the "patent" is hardly known.

Under certain institutional circumstances, some things develop very slowly, and some events develop extremely rapidly. Hungary was largely controlled by the socialist camp "Big Brother" in the Soviet Union. From October 23 to November 4, 1956, the "Hungarian October Incident" took place. The Soviet Union quickly acted and conducted two military interventions. It took 13 days to suppress the demonstrators.

Hungary characterized the incident as a "counterrevolutionary case" and was called the "people's uprising" after the drastic changes in Eastern Europe. During the Cold War, the West believed that this was a revolution. It was the resistance of the Hungarian people to the control of the Soviet Union. It was to achieve the return from the "centralized system" to the "democratic system"; the socialist countries believed that it was hostile to socialism in Hungary. The result of the anti-revolutionary forces of the system and the international imperialism colluding with each other and the result of external integration is to subvert the socialist system and restore capitalism.

The book "From Eastern Europe" to "New Europe" in the School of Humanities, China University of Political Science and Law, "Returning from 20 Years to New Europe", tells the story of former Soviet Union, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, the former Yugoslavia and other Soviet-style Eastern European countries. The title of the Hungarian chapter is "The Three "Cumulative Layers" that lead to the transformation of the political system," saying that the cause of each subsequent event can be pushed back to the previous "cumulative layer", or that each abnormal end The historical events are "destined to be the beginning of the next historical event". This is like the "cultural stratum" on archaeological excavation, which overlaps each other and causes each other.

In 1979, ten years ago in Eastern Europe, relying on the foreign entrepreneur Lakshi, Rubik's Rubik's Cube was taken to Nuremberg in West Germany and participated in the Toy Fair. This city, which is more famous for the "Nuremberg Trial" after World War II, is the "Toy Capital" of the world and is one of the important international toy trading centers. Lakshi squatted at the exhibition while playing with the Rubik's Cube, so he met the British toy inventor and toy company owner Kramer. The two hit it off and signed an agreement to promote the Rubik's Cube in the world. Subsequently, Kramer signed a contract with a US toy company to export 1 million Rubik's Cubes to the United States. In early 1980, the American toy company officially named the Rubik's cube "Rubik" s Cube.

The Rubik's Cube is quickly popular around the world, and that is the power of the market, or the power of the market economy. By the end of 1982, the global Rubik's cube had sold more than 100 million, and the sales of pirated copies reached 150 million. This is the "magic cube" of the market, and Rubik wants not to think about it. This year, "Magic Cube" entered the Oxford Dictionary, and Budapest began the first Rubik's Cube World Championship.

Today, Australian students have developed the fastest robot to restore Rubik's Cube, which takes 10.18 seconds. The Rubik's Cube, which American scientists use to solve any combination of the "Minimum Restoration Step" mystery, can be restored within 20 steps. People have researched and invented the Rubik's Cube and the higher-order Rubik's Cube, even reaching the 12th order. The variety of Rubik's Cube is increasing, the form of competition is constantly updated, and the Rubik's Cube has become an emerging scientific and technological activity project. The Rubik's Cube has truly become a magical Rubik's Cube.

Rubik, because of a Rubik's cube, was less than 40 years old and became the richest man in Hungary before the upheaval in Eastern Europe. The genius and wisdom of poverty have made great changes in life. But Rubik was a professor at all. He quickly got tired of life under the spotlight. Later, he stopped accepting interviews from any reporters. He no longer rushed to public places and quietly disappeared into his own world.

"Science Times" (2011-08-24 B3 Reading Week) Author: Xu Thunder

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