By Brad Dison
From 1971 until 1979, Enro was a professor of architecture at the Budapest College of Applied Arts in Hungary. In 1974, Enro was teaching a special course called “Form Studies” which taught students to create different three-dimensional forms and shapes without a special function. While teaching the complicated concepts of three-dimensional movement to his students, he began to experiment with a certain basic shape.
He took advantage of the college’s woodshop and began fitting pieces together until he had assembled 27 blocks of wood with rubber bands into a single prototype. Enro began twisting and turning the pieces of his prototype to ensure that the rubber bands would hold, then he realized a problem. He was unable to get it back in the same order as when he began. Rather than simply disassembling and reassembling the blocks of wood, he was determined to return it to its original state in the same way that he had by twisting and turning it. After working on it for several months, he finally succeeded. He was ecstatic. On his second prototype, Enro removed the rubbers bands and created a new internal component which held the pieces together more securely. It also removed the temptation to pull the pieces to stretch the rubber bands and reposition the pieces. It removed the temptation to cheat.
Once satisfied with his prototype, Enro showed his creation to coworkers and students, all of whom were captivated by its difficulty. Enro saw this as an opportunity. In 1975, Enro received a patent for his creation and tried to find a market for it. He took his prototype to toy fairs, but most toy sellers said there was nothing like it on the market for them to compare it to. They saw that as a negative, but Enro argued that that was what made it such a good product. It was simple, self-contained, easy to handle, three-dimensional, and had no parts to lose. It was totally unique. They argued that it was just too difficult. Finally, a small company in Budapest agreed to test Enro’s creation.
In late 1977, the first batches of Enro’s creation were released in toy shops in Budapest and sales were decent. In February of 1979, another small toy company saw Enro’s creation at Germany’s Nuremberg Toy Fair and worked with Enro in signing a contract with Ideal Toys to release it worldwide. In May 1980, Enro’s creation finally made it to the world market. At $1.99 per unit, sales were initially slow, but a newspaper, magazine, and television campaign created a craze for the product. Within three years, Ideal Toys sold an estimated 200 million units. More than 50 books have been published on Enro’s creation. Since 1980, more than 450 million units have been sold and it has become a cultural icon around the world. 2024 marks the 50th anniversary of Enro’s invention which was nearly named “The Gordian Knot.” Its original title, “The Magic Cube,” would have left its inventor in obscurity. Thankfully, Ideal Toys decided to use Enro’s name as the title for the product. At one point or other, nearly everyone has struggled to solve a Rubik’s Cube.
Sources:
1. Todd Coopee, “Squaring off with Rubik’s Cube,” Reader’s Digest, September 2024, p.26.
2. “Enro Rubik – An Extended Interview – G4G13 Apr 2018,” accessed November 3, 2024, https://youtu.be/G6kKOjvlWh0?
3. “Enro Rubik: Creator of the Cube, TIME,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?
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