Some History
Back in the early 80's I was
big time into the Rubik's cube. Not only was I really
fast at solving it, but I was also into making custom cubes
by pealing off the boring stickers that come with the cube and
making interesting new ones to stick on in their place. You can't
quite see it in the picture, but this rainbow cube (I was big
time into rainbows at the time too) has a background made from
paper that says KRIS WUNDERLICH all over it... another project
I was into at the time from a graphic arts class in high school.
Anyway, the stickers were made by putting clear contact paper
on top and double sided tape on the back, and cutting them into
sticker sized shapes by hand with a pair of scissors. It was a
huge amount of work, but made for some awesome custom cubes...
and 17 years later the stickers are still stuck solid onto the
cube... thanks 3M for the excellent double sided tape. I was working
for Ideal Toys at the time... demonstrating Rubik's cubes in shopping
malls on weekends for $20 an hour... not a bad gig for a 16 year
old kid... and when they started talking about making a 4x4 cube
I got really excited about it.
Due to my inside connections
with Ideal Toys, I found out about the upcoming Rubik's Revenge
long enough before it actually came out that I just couldn't wait
and I made my own 4x4 out of a 3x3 cube and a bunch of Velcro.
It didn't really work very well... to turn the cube down the center
you had to peel off each of the velcro enabled stickers and move
them around to the next spot on the cube. But with the use of
this very strange and difficult to use cube and a computer program
I wrote that displayed a graphic of the cube and let you manipulate
it, I did manage to figure out the new challenges that the 4x4
presents and was quickly able to solve it when finally I got my
hands on one. By the way... the program was written on our Northstar
Advantage - remember this was 1981 - and no, I no longer have
a copy. I wish I did. Actually, I think I've still got the floppy
around someplace... anybody got anything that can read an 8 1/2"
CPM floppy disk? It was written in Basic, and didn't do anything
towards solving the thing... it just gave me the ability to move
the cube around and view the changes. Years later I took a class
in group theory... thinking I might write a program that actually
solved the thing... but I never got around to it. Sorry Dad,
number theory and complex mathematics just isn't my thing.
Some 10 years later, in the summer of '93, Andy and I took
a vacation to England to visit my parents and play around in ruined
castles for a couple of weeks... and while we were in London we
got the chance to visit David Singmaster and his fabulous cube
and puzzle box collection. I had not made a custom cube in years...
but I wanted to bring him something to add to his collection...
so I made him a cube with the front of a dollar bill wrapped around
three sides, and the back of a dollar bill wrapped around the
other three sides. It was awesome... by far the coolest cube I
had ever made. I wanted one for myself, but I just couldn't bring
myself to do the work. Making cube stickers this way might have
worked fine for a 16 year old kid, but it was just way more work
than I was willing to endure at the ripe old age of 27. Anyway...
we had recently had a local printer make die cut cardboard Icehouse
pieces for us, and we kept the die when they were finished...
so I had some idea how a steel rule die works... and I decided
that I would get a die made for cutting cube stickers so I wouldn't
have to cut all these stickers out by hand with a pair of scissors.
Time passed...
Some History - Technology
- The Cubes
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