#1974

Rubik's Cube (1974) — A Labyrinth of 43 Quintillion States, and a Single Solution

In 1974, the Budapest architect Ernő Rubik carved a small cube as a teaching aid—and ended up placing an entire 'state space,' some 43 quintillion configurations with exactly one solved form, into the palm of a hand. This piece traces the object's precise provenance through primary and secondary sources—its 1974 invention, its 1980 global debut, and the 2010 proof that 'God's Number is 20'—and reads, as history, how an object with no screen and no power supply embodied half a century early the vocabulary modern puzzle designers now take for granted: reversibility, a unique solution, and a space to be searched.