Domino toppling is the activity of standing up dominoes in sequence known as a domino run and then knocking down the first one in line to strike the next, which knocks that down to strike the next, and so on, creating a chain reaction also called the domino effect. A competition between two or more players to be first to have all one's dominoes fall is sometimes called a domino rally. If domino toppling is demonstrated to an audience it is called a domino show.
Domino toppling is achieved by standing dominoes on end and arranging them in the desired patterns and sequences. Such a sequence is called a domino run. Using dominoes of different colours, the builders are able to create patterns and images. The dominoes can have different top and back colours, meaning that the dominoes display different colours before and after being toppled. Other tricks include three-dimensional stackings; shapes such as spirals and letters; Rube Goldberg machines; special toppling techniques, and special effects. Only the first domino should be toppled by hand in order to initiate the process; the rest must be toppled automatically by one another in succession. Arrangements of millions of tiles have been made that have taken many minutes, even hours to fall. For large and elaborate arrangements, special blockages (also known as firebreaks) are employed at regular distances to prevent a premature toppling from undoing more than a section of the tiles while still being able to be removed without damage.
At one time, Pressman Toys manufactured a product called Domino Rally that contained tiles and mechanical devices for setting up toppling exhibits.
The first public domino shows were those of Bob Speca, Jr. from Broomall, Pennsylvania, US. In 1976, at the age of 18, he established the first official world record for the most dominoes toppled in a chain reaction, by setting up and toppling down 11,111 pieces. [1] That event, and his appearance on The Tonight Show [2] triggered a domino-toppling craze, leading to a long lasting competition among domino-builders about the world record. In 1984, Klaus Friedrich from Germany was the last person to set up a new domino-toppling world record single-handedly. [3] In that same year student film makers Sheri Herman and Bonnie Cutler from Temple University produced and directed the film And They All Fall Down, showcasing Speca's talents. The film is part of the permanent collection of the Berlin Film Museum.
On 9 June 1979, British engineer Michael Cairney set a Guinness Book World Record by toppling 169,573 dominoes in Poughkeepsie, New York at the Mid-Hudson Civic Center benefiting the National Hemophilia Association. After fifteen days of set-up, The World Domino Spectacular launched with over 30 domino stunts, Cairney and his all volunteer team cheered as the 22,000 square foot progressive topple crossed mini bridges, triggered a rocket, toppled spirals, knocked over a twenty foot domino peacock design and made the first domino-enabled international phone call to confirm the world record. Stunt engineer Bruce Duffy designed the World Domino Spectacular Stunt #22 which consisted of 53 flags representing the members of the World Federation of Hemophilia.
The Netherlands has hosted an annual domino-toppling exhibition called Domino Day since 1986. The event held on 18 November 2005 knocked over 4 million dominoes by a team from Weijers Domino Productions. On Domino Day 2008 (14 November 2008), the Weijers Domino Productions team attempted to set 10 records: [4]
This record attempt was held in the WTC Expo hall in Leeuwarden. The artist who toppled the first stone was the Finnish acrobat Salima Peippo.
A year later, in 2009, the world record of most dominoes toppled in one chain reaction was set to be 4,491,863 in Leeuwarden.
In 1998, the Netherlands hosted a domino toppling exhibition called Domino D-Day, it was renamed Domino Day, following the initial 1998 event. It ran annually until 2009, and has been suspended due to financial and administrative issues since 2010. Domino Day made popular the concept of the "Builder's Challenge" wherein the build team must place dominoes into the project once the topple has already begun in order to complete the build in a "race against the clock" type challenge.
In Berlin on 9 November 2009, giant domino tiles were toppled in a 20th-anniversary commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Former Polish president and Solidarity leader Lech Wałęsa set the toppling in motion.
Since 2015, The Incredible Science Machine, an international, multi-team build event has been held annually in the USA. As of November 2017, they hold the current record for most dominoes toppled in America with just under 250,000. [5]
The phenomenon also has some theoretical relevance (amplifier, digital signal, information processing), [6] and this amounts to the theoretical possibility of building domino computers. [7] Dominoes are also commonly used as components in Rube Goldberg machines.
Dominoes is a family of tile-based games played with gaming pieces. Each domino is a rectangular tile, usually with a line dividing its face into two square ends. Each end is marked with a number of spots or is blank. The backs of the tiles in a set are indistinguishable, either blank or having some common design. The gaming pieces make up a domino set, sometimes called a deck or pack. The traditional European domino set consists of 28 tiles, also known as pieces, bones, rocks, stones, men, cards or just dominoes, featuring all combinations of spot counts between zero and six. A domino set is a generic gaming device, similar to playing cards or dice, in that a variety of games can be played with a set. Another form of entertainment using domino pieces is the practice of domino toppling.
A domino effect is the cumulative effect produced when one event sets off a series of similar or related events, a form of chain reaction. The term is an analogy to a falling row of dominoes. It typically refers to a linked sequence of events where the time between successive events is relatively short. The term can be used literally or metaphorically.
Pai gow is a Chinese gambling game, played with a set of 32 Chinese dominoes. It is played in major casinos in China ; the United States ; Canada ; Australia; and New Zealand.
Reuben Garrett Lucius Goldberg, better known as Rube Goldberg, was an American cartoonist, sculptor, author, engineer, and inventor.
Tien Gow or Tin Kau is the name of Chinese gambling games played with either a pair of dice or a set of 32 Chinese dominoes. In these games, Heaven is the top rank of the civil suit, while Nine is the top rank of the military suit. The civil suit was originally called the Chinese (華) suit while the military suit was called the barbarian (夷) suit but this was changed during the Qing dynasty to avoid offending the ruling Manchus. The highly idiosyncratic and culture-specific suit-system of these games is likely the conceptual origin of suits, an idea that later is used for playing cards. Play is counter-clockwise.
A deterministic system is a conceptual model of the philosophical doctrine of determinism applied to a system for understanding everything that has and will occur in the system, based on the physical outcomes of causality. In a deterministic system, every action, or cause, produces a reaction, or effect, and every reaction, in turn, becomes the cause of subsequent reactions. The totality of these cascading events can theoretically show exactly how the system will exist at any moment in time.
A tessellation or tiling is the covering of a surface, often a plane, using one or more geometric shapes, called tiles, with no overlaps and no gaps. In mathematics, tessellation can be generalized to higher dimensions and a variety of geometries.
Dennis Miller Live was an American weekly late night talk show on HBO, hosted by comedian Dennis Miller. The show ran 215 episodes from 1994 to 2002, and received five Emmy awards and 11 Emmy nominations. It was also nominated six times for the Writers Guild of America Award for "Best Writing For A Comedy/Variety Series", and won three of those six times.
Domino Day is a world record attempt for the highest number of toppling domino stones, organized from 1998 to 2009 by Endemol Netherlands. Together with Weijers Domino Productions of Robin Paul Weijers, also known as Mr. Domino, parties teamed up to set a new world record. The production was mainly organized at the WTC Expo in Leeuwarden, Netherlands. Domino day did not occur in 2003, because the producer wanted to revise the format.
A domino is a tile used in a family of games called "dominoes".
The Domino Day 2005 house sparrow, generally known as the domino sparrow was a house sparrow that was shot and killed by a hunter from the company Duke Faunabeheer in the Frisian Expo Centre in Leeuwarden, Netherlands, during preparations for Domino Day 2005 on 14 November 2005. With only four days to go until Domino Day 2005, the bird flew into the building and landed on several domino bricks, eventually causing 23,000 of them to fall. Because of the protective gaps that were placed between groups of dominoes, the damage was limited. Faunabeheer was hired to remove the unwanted intruder from the centre. After trying to capture the sparrow with nets and sticks, the company decided to shoot the bird.
No One Can Stop Mr. Domino! is a puzzle video game developed by Artdink and released for the PlayStation in 1998. The user controls one of five anthropomorphic dominoes, placing other dominoes in rows that will successfully topple while avoiding obstacles and working under a time limit.
Fortress is a series of fantasy novels by American writer C. J. Cherryh, published by HarperCollins. They are set in a medieval fantasy world with a 15th-century feel and feature magic, sorcery, medieval warfare, politics and other elements common to the high fantasy subgenre. The first book in the series, Fortress in the Eye of Time, was published in 1995 and followed by Fortress of Eagles in 1998, Fortress of Owls in 1999, Fortress of Dragons in 2000 and Fortress of Ice in 2006. The books are all sub-titled "A Galasien novel".
A domino computer is a mechanical computer built using dominoes to represent mechanical amplification or logic gating of digital signals.
Muggins, sometimes also called All Fives, is a domino game played with any of the commonly available sets. Although suitable for up to four players, Muggins is described by John McLeod as "a good, quick two player game".
A train game or railway game is a board game that represents the construction and operation of railways. Train games are highly involved, hobby board games that simulate the economic and logistic details of running a railway. Like wargames, train games represent a relatively small niche in the games market.
A game is a structured type of play, usually undertaken for entertainment or fun, and sometimes used as an educational tool. Many games are also considered to be work or art.
The Dutch Society for the Protection of Animals is a Dutch voluntary animal protection organisation, founded in 1864. Today it has about 200,000 members and about 65 permanent employees.
A Penrose tiling is an example of an aperiodic tiling. Here, a tiling is a covering of the plane by non-overlapping polygons or other shapes, and a tiling is aperiodic if it does not contain arbitrarily large periodic regions or patches. However, despite their lack of translational symmetry, Penrose tilings may have both reflection symmetry and fivefold rotational symmetry. Penrose tilings are named after mathematician and physicist Roger Penrose, who investigated them in the 1970s.
Lily Hevesh is an American domino artist and YouTuber working under the channel name Hevesh5.