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- [00:00]
Kraken Pro Advertiser
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- [00:40]
Lindsey Graham
It's 6am On May 19, 1974, in a small apartment in Budapest, the capital of Hungary. Springtime sunshine streams through the kitchen window as 60 year old Magdoina Santo fills her green enamel kettle and lights the gas to the usual soundtrack of her home. Sanding, sawing, drilling and the occasional huff of frustration have underscored Magdoine's life for the past six weeks, and this Sunday is no exception. Magdoyna shares her apartment with her 29 year old son, a lecturer in architecture by profession, he's recently devoted his every spare moment to a project that has become an obsession. So Magdoina pours her son's tea into a cup and squeezes it onto a tray stacked with smoked meats, bread and scrambled eggs. Then she carries the tray down the hall to her son's room. The bedroom is in its usual state. Rubber bands, paper clips, springs, cardboard, wood and tools fill every space. And in the middle, covered in sawdust, is her son. He seems pleased with himself though. Setting down the tray, Magdoino notices a wooden block on the desk itself made up of multiple colored cubes. This must be what all the fuss has been about. She reaches out to pick it up, but he stops her. He says it's not quite ready yet. It still needs a few finishing touches. Magdoina smiles. There's no point in arguing with the perfectionist she's raised, but she knows him too well. This morning he's achieved something important. Magdoina Santo's son is called Erno Rubik, and even he isn't entirely sure what he's created. His aim was to produce a teaching tool to help his students grasp through three dimensional movement, and this working prototype may well achieve that goal. But this small multi colored wooden block will also take Airnu's life and career in a totally unexpected direction after its creation on May 19, 1974. Hopefully by now you've heard me mention the European Christmas Market tour I'm putting together for this December. An incredible 10 day journey throughout France, Germany and Austria, packed with traditional Christmas cheer and history of course. Well, I have an update. The trip is confirmed. We've booked enough places to definitely go ahead. Which means if you've been thinking of joining me, you need to act fast. Only 20 places are available total, and over half of those are already taken. Tickets are on sale now. Go to historydaily.com and look for the Christmas Market section.
- [03:11]
Jan from Toyota
That's historydaily.com hey campers, it's Jan from Toyota this Summer. We're headed to Camp Toyota and the fun starts now. Kicking things off by kicking up mud. Jump in campers. We're going off roading in a 4Runner. Next we're heading to the hot springs in Arav 4. And finally, park your Tundras and Tacomas around the campfire because we're roasting marshmallows.
- [03:37]
Toyota Dealer Announcer
Dealer inventory may vary, so your participating Toyota dealer for details Event hands to you first. Toyota let's go places.
- [03:44]
Kraken Pro Advertiser
US Traders who wanted to go long or short with leverage using their own crypto as collateral had two choices go offshore or don't. That just changed. CFTC Regulated Spot Margin Trading is now live on Kraken Pro. Up to 10 times leverage, long or short your crypto as collateral. Unleash your trading potential. Download Kraken Pro on the App Store or Google Play. Spot margin trading involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. Leverage magnifies gains and losses. View Ninja Trader Disclosures for more information on brokerage services. Geographic restrictions apply. Terms apply.
- [04:14]
Azure Living Well Advertiser
You don't buy on. Hope you study the label at Azure well, we support that. Our commitment is simple. Tell the truth Ingredient listed, every amount disclosed. No proprietary blends. No guesswork. We go beyond organic and basic testing with comprehensive third party verification. Take a look at what's in your cabinet, then visit azurelivingwell.com to shop and learn more. That's a Z u r e livingwell.com these products have not been evaluated by the FDA and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.
- [04:45]
Kraken Pro Advertiser
US Traders who wanted to go long or short with leverage using their own crypto as collateral had two go offshore or or don't. That just changed. CFTC Regulated Spot Margin Trading is now live on Kraken Pro. Up to 10 times leverage, long or short your crypto as collateral. Unleash your trading potential. Download Kraken Pro on the App Store or Google Play. Spot Margin trading involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. Leverage magnifies gains and losses. View Ninja Trader Disclosures for more information on brokerage services, geographic Restrictions apply. Terms apply.
- [05:18]
Lindsey Graham
From Noiser and Airship. I'm Lindsey Graham and this is History.
- [05:22]
Azure Living Well Advertiser
Daily.
- [05:38]
Lindsey Graham
History is made every day on this podcast. Every day we tell the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world. Today is May 19, 1974 the invention of the Rubik's Cube it's May 6, 1960, at an airport in Hungary, 14 years before the invention of the Rubik's Cube. Near the Runway, 15 year old Ernu Rubik grips the rail of the viewing platform, his stomach in knots. This is a big day for the Rubik family. Ernu's father is a highly respected aeronautical engineer, and today he's overseeing the maiden flight of a new glider he's designed. This prototype features an experimental V shaped tail and lightweight corrugated metal skin. Ernu has watched his father work on the glider from the very beginning, and he has closely observed how his father solves puzzles and overcomes setbacks. Gazing skyward and shielding his eyes from the sun's glare, Ernu watches the glider swoop effortlessly through the clouds. He hears a giddy murmur from the assembled onlookers, who are just as impressed and exhilarated by the sleek new craft as he is. Ernu's father is not a warm man, and the relationship between them is a distant one. Still, Ernu is deeply proud of his dad's achievement, and he hopes he can find similar success one day. But he doesn't want to build airplanes. Instead of following in his father's footsteps, when Ernu finishes school, he enrolls to study architecture at college. He enjoys his time there, but while he's studying, Ernu's home life grows strained. His parents marriage collapses and after the breakup, Ernu moves in with his mother. Though he's inherited an engineer's mind from his father, Ernu also connects deeply with his mother's more artistic and intuitive worldview. She is a poet and pianist by profession, and despite losing nearly all her family During World War II, she remains one of life's optimists. So from the wreckage of her marriage, she builds a new haven for her and Ernu in their small shared apartment in Budapest. By 1971, Ernu has graduated and been appointed as a lecturer at the Budapest College of Applied Arts. He enjoys the job and takes great pleasure in delving into the complexities of three dimensional design with his classes. But he runs into one difficulty again and again how to convey 3D concepts to his students with words and diagrams alone. What he needs is a tool, a physical device that will help the students grapple with These complicated ideas in a more tactile way. Drawing on his father's technical mindset and his mother's more artistic, playful spirit, Ernu starts working on a new teaching aid. His idea is to construct a segmented cube where the individual pieces can move separately, but the whole stays as one. Using his bedroom as a workshop, Ernu quickly puts together his first prototype. It's just a proof of concept held together with little more than rubber bands and paper clips. But he learned something important from this flimsy box. His first idea was to create a 2x2 cube, but he quickly sees that is too simplistic. 3x3 is required instead. That will create more possible combinations while still fitting comfortably in the hand. And it will also provide a fixed centerpiece that can hold the other blocks together. So after weeks more work, and having added primary colored stickers to the faces of the cube, erinu completes his second prototype on May 19, 1974. Sitting in his chaotic bedroom, surrounded by tools and sawdust, Erinu puts his cube to the test. He rotates the sides excitedly, back and forth, around and around. The mechanism is a small triumph. It moves with fluid precision, exactly as he had imagined. But then his enthusiasm stalls. He stares at the mangled mess of colors he's made and realizes he has no idea how to undo what he's just done. The neat, orderly block he started with is gone, and in its place is chaos. He tries a turn to the left and then a turn to the right, but the colors only seem to drift farther away from where they started. He's stuck and doesn't know how to go back. He's not even certain there is a way back. It's taken Ernu weeks to build this cube, but it will take him almost as long to figure out the solution to the puzzle he's created. And he'll have to use all his mother's creative thinking, his father's determination, and his own gifts of logic and patience to see it through.
- [10:04]
Azure Living Well Advertiser
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- [10:34]
Kraken Pro Advertiser
CFTC regulated spot margin trading is now live on Kraken Pro Trade with up to 10 times leverage, long or short your crypto as collateral. The conviction was always there. Now the platform is too. Unleash your trading potential. Download Kraken Pro on the App Store or Google Play Spot Margin trading involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. Leverage magnifies gains and losses. View Ninja Trader disclosures for more information on brokerage surfaces. Geographic restrictions apply. Terms apply.
- [11:05]
Azure Living Well Advertiser
You don't buy on. Hope you study the label. At azurewell, we support that. Our commitment is simple. Tell the truth. Every ingredient listed, every amount disclosed. No proprietary blends. No guesswork. We go beyond organic and basic testing with comprehensive third party verification. Take a look at what's in your cabinet, then visit azurelivingwell.com to shop and learn more. That's a zur e livingwell.com these products have not been evaluated by the FDA and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.
- [11:35]
Jan from Toyota
Hey campers, it's Jan from Toyota. This summer we're headed to Camp Toyota and the fun starts now. We're kicking things off by kicking up mud. Jump in campers. We're going off roading in a 4Runner. Next we're heading to the hot springs in Arav 4. And finally, park your tundras and Tacomas around the campfire because we're roasting marshmallows. This summer starts here.
- [11:59]
Toyota Dealer Announcer
Dealer inventory may vary, so your participating Toyota dealer for details. Event ends June 1st. Toyota let's go Places.
- [12:14]
Lindsey Graham
It's June 1974 in Budapest, Hungary, two weeks after Ernu Rubik completed his prototype cube. Ernu hunches in his swivel chair and stares in frustration at the cube on his desk. It's surrounded by a clutter of notebooks, pencils and empty coffee cups. What began as a neat looking gadget to help his students has become an enigma. Ernu has inadvertently created a puzzle, one that's so difficult that even he, its inventor, is struggling to solve it. Because no matter what he does, the colors just won't line up. Every move he makes that fixes one section jumbles another. The math is mind bending, and as he works through the combinations, Ernu calculates that there can be more than 43 quintillion unique configurations. That's 43 followed by 18 zeros. And he can't ask anyone for help or consult a textbook because this is a problem entirely of his own making. Today, though, proves a turning point. After more frustrating hours of sitting and thinking, Ernu believes he spotted a pattern. He opens a fresh page and scribbles down a series of maneuvers. Turn the top face clockwise, the right face up, then the top face counterclockwise. With fingers sweaty and tender from days of twisting, he gingerly tests his theory. He makes the moves and then makes them again and again. And with a disbelieving thrill, Ernu finds what he's been desperate for. A semblance of control. Gradually, as the summer days pass, Ernu builds on his knowledge. He develops more specific sequences and starts to untangle the knot he's made. First, he matches one face. Then he masters the middle layer. Then finally, with a rush of euphoria, he completes the last side. A full month after unthinkingly scrambling the cube, now all faces are restored to solid color. Now that he knows how to solve his puzzle, it's time to let others have a try. When Ernu shows his students the cube, they are immediately fascinated, even though they too find it maddeningly difficult. They can't put it down. And when Ernu tells him that there definitely is a solution, they just have to solve it. Seeing others share his obsession, Ernu realizes he has produced something far more interesting than a mere classroom tool. So he spends some time improving the internal mechanism and making the cube look as good as possible before applying for a patent on January 30, 1975. Armed with knowledge of the bureaucratic process gained from his father, Ernu registers the cube as a spatial logic toy. The difficulty though, is he is a college lecturer in a communist state. Hungary may have a reputation as one of the more open societies behind the Iron Curtain, but it's still not exactly a prime location to take a commercial product to market. In a planned economy like Hungary's, toy production is a very low priority. And in any case, the state run companies he approaches are dismissive and uninterested in a game they deem too hard and too cerebral. Finally, though, after a long and tireless search, Airnu convinces a small cooperative in Budapest to take a chance. As the company's specialty is producing small plastic items like chess pieces. Airnu's design is a bit of a stretch, especially the complex internal structure. Gearing up for production seems to take forever. But eventually, in late 1977, the first batch rolls off the assembly line. It's sold in local toy stores with the name Airnu has chosen for it, the Buvouz Kotska, or the Magic Cube with zero advertising. Airnu watches his creation become a word of mouth success all around Budapest, because despite its Intricacies People cannot put it down on trams, at parks and coffee shops, in lines outside stores. Ernu observes with quiet pride as more and more Hungarians become obsessed with solving his cube. And it's in a cafe that the toy is spotted by businessman Tibor Latzi. Working for a foreign computer company and having corporate experience outside the country, he immediately sees the cube's potential. Tibor gains authorization from the state trading company to market the cube in the west, and Ernu meets with him in 1979 to discuss his plans. The two, though, are a mismatch, one a scruffy academic and the other a sharp suited entrepreneur, and Ernu can't help being skeptical. To him, the idea that people outside Hungary would be interested in his invention seems somehow absurd. Still, he's willing to let Tibor try. And soon. Soon Tibor will head west with AirNoo's Magic Cube. And there this strange invention will get a new name and become one of the most iconic and instantly recognizable products of the 20th century.
- [16:57]
Azure Living Well Advertiser
You don't buy on Hope you study the label. At azurewell, we support that. Our commitment is simple. Tell the truth. Every ingredient listed, every amount disclosed. No proprietary blends, no guesswork. We go beyond organic and basic testing with comprehensive third party verification. Take a look at what's in your cabinet, then visit azurelivingwell.com to shop and learn more. That's a zurivingwell.com these products have not been evaluated by the FDA and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.
- [17:28]
Meaningful Beauty Advertiser
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- [18:31]
Jan from Toyota
This summer we're headed to Camp Toyota and the fun starts now. We're kicking things off by kicking up mud. Jump in campers. We're going off roading in a 4Runner. Next we're heading to the hot springs in Arav 4. And finally, park your tundras and Tacomas around the campfire because we're roasting marshmallows. Your summer starts here.
- [18:52]
Toyota Dealer Announcer
Dealer inventory may vary so you're participating. Toyota Dealer details event ends June 1st Toyota Let's Go Places when was the
- [18:59]
Found App Advertiser
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- [19:36]
Lindsey Graham
It's June 5, 1982 at the Vigoro Concert hall in Budapest. Three years after Ernu Rubik met Tibor Lazzi, 16 year old Minh Thai swallows hard and tries to concentrate. A Vietnamese refugee now living in Los Angeles, Min is representing the United States at the first International Rubik's Cube Championships. The competition is being broadcast live around the world. Min is anxious in front of the lights, the audience and TV cameras. With the stars and stripes emblazoned proudly across his T shirt. He takes one last deep breath and then steps up to the podium. The first international Rubik's Cube Championships features 19 participants from different countries around the world. Each competitor has three attempts at solving a Rubik's Cube in the fastest time possible. Observing is a panel of judges presided over by none other than Ernu Rubik himself. Quickly, the timer starts and Min grabs the cube in front of him. His fingers and wrists dance around the block in a blur of color in complete silence, save for the squeaky clack of rotating plastic bricks with a laser focus. Min employs the instant calculations and refined technique of the Corners first method, steering the pieces where he wants them. Then he slams the solved puzzles down and the clock stops at 22.95 seconds. It's a new world record and enough to win Min first prize. When businessman Tibor Lazzi took airnu's invention to the Nuremberg Toy Fair in 1979. He was optimistic about the Cube's potential, but even he never predicted the sensation it became. Having been licensed by the Ideal Toy Company of America, it was officially renamed the Rubik's Cube in honor of its creator. And now the sense of frustration and thrill that Airnu first experienced in his bedroom workshop is shared by avid cubers across the globe. And as the 1980s dawn, the Rubik's Cube is already one of the biggest crazes of the decade. 100 million units have been sold, and by the end of 1983, that figure will double again. When Airnu sat at his desk putting the finishing touches to his invention, there was no way he could have imagined the astonishing success that would follow. But through his passion, ingenuity and patience, he became a surprise icon in the history of interactive design and puzzles. All thanks to a wooden prototype he completed on May 19, 1974. Next on History Daily May 20, 1875. The meter convention is signed by 17 nations, establishing a system for standardizing measurements worldwide. From Noiser and Airship, this is History Daily Hosted, edited and executive produced by me, Lindsey Graham Audio editing by Mohammad Shazi Sound designed by Molly Bond Music by Throne this episode is written and researched by Bill Holland. Edited by William Simpson Managing Producer Emily Burke Executive producers are William Simpson for Airship and Pascal Hughes for Noiser.
- [22:52]
Jan from Toyota
Hey campers, it's Jan from Toyota. This summer we're headed to Camp Toyota and the fun starts now. We're kicking things off by kicking up mud. Jump in campers. We're going off roading in a 4Runner. Next, we're heading to the hot springs in Arav 4. And finally, park your tundras and Tacomas around the campfire because we're roasting marshmallows. Your summer start here.
- [23:16]
Toyota Dealer Announcer
Dealer inventory may vary, so you're participating. Toyota dealer for details. Event ends June 1st. Toyota let's go places.
- [23:22]
Found App Advertiser
When was the last time you felt in control of your business? Finances? Expenses tracked, Invoices sent, taxes ready. That's where Found comes in. Found brings your banking, bookkeeping, invoicing and taxes together in one simple app. Manage expenses, invoice clients, send payments and prep for tax time right where you bank. Join the hundreds of thousands who have already streamlined their finances with Found. Open a Found account for free@found.com that's f o u n d.com found is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by lead bank member FDIC
- [23:54]
Lindsey Graham
and Doug there's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save
- [23:58]
Kraken Pro Advertiser
on car insurance with Liberty Mutual.
- [24:00]
Lindsey Graham
Even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show.
- [24:04]
Jan from Toyota
Hey, everyone. Check out this guy and his bird. What is this, your first date?
- [24:07]
Kraken Pro Advertiser
Oh, no. We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together. We're married. Me to a human, him to a bird.
- [24:14]
Azure Living Well Advertiser
Yeah, the bird looks out of your league.
- [24:15]
Kraken Pro Advertiser
Anyways, get a quote@libertymutual.com or with your local agent.
- [24:19]
Azure Living Well Advertiser
Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty.