Thomas Kremer (26 May 1930 – 24 June 2017) was a game inventor and marketer who acquired the rights to market the Rubik's Cube. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
Tom Kremer was a games designer, entrepreneur and publisher, best known for his discovery and popularisation of the Rubik's Cube. As an octogenarian he founded the publishing house Notting Hill Editions, with the aim of reinvigorating the lost art of the essay.
Kremer was born in Transylvania (Székelyföld) in 1930, the son of Bundy Kremer an army officer and Lilly(Heller) Kremer. As a teenager he was imprisoned at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, he was freed upon its liberation in April 1945. Travelling to Israel he joined the fight for the fledgling country's independence, gained in 1948. Following studies in philosophy at Edinburgh University, where he met his wife-to-be, he carried out post-graduate research at the Sorbonne.
Kremer had been living in England and working in games design since the 1960s when he visited a trade show in Germany and saw the Rubik's Cube for the first time in 1979. His son David recalled: "The cube wasn't a big sensation at the Nuremberg toy fair: it was just a small thing in a backwater section at this huge event." Kremer licensed the design to the Ideal Toy Company, which by 1983 had already sold some 300m of the fiendishly complicated 3D puzzle. The Cube's worldwide success came, he said, because it "challenges you with simplicity. You can handle it, and yet it has enormous hidden complexity." But it also became a victim of its own success, as his son explained: "Everybody had one. The cube went from world's greatest fad to zero: there were thousands piled up in warehouses." Kremer later reacquired the license, allowing him to introduce it to new generations of puzzlers.
Kremer was a cofounder of Winning Moves Games and later chairman of the board, while cofounder Phil Orbanes served as president. It was while serving at Winning Moves that Kremer was able to reacquire the Rubik's Cube in 2000. Kremer was married to Lady Alison Emily Kremer daughter of Robert Balfour, 3rd Earl of Balfour
The Rubik's Cube is a 3-D combination puzzle originally invented in 1974 by Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Ernő Rubik. Originally called the Magic Cube, the puzzle was licensed by Rubik to be sold by Pentangle Puzzles in the UK in 1978, and then by Ideal Toy Corp in 1980 via businessman Tibor Laczi and Seven Towns founder Tom Kremer. The cube was released internationally in 1980 and became one of the most recognized icons in popular culture. It won the 1980 German Game of the Year special award for Best Puzzle. As of January 2009, 350 million cubes had been sold worldwide, making it the world's bestselling puzzle game and bestselling toy. The Rubik's Cube was inducted into the US National Toy Hall of Fame in 2014.
Ernő Rubik is a Hungarian inventor, architect, and professor of architecture. He is best known for the invention of mechanical puzzles including the Rubik's Cube (1974), Rubik's Magic, Rubik's Magic: Master Edition, and Rubik's Snake.
Optimal solutions for Rubik's Cube refer to solutions that are the shortest. There are two common ways to measure the length of a solution. The first is to count the number of quarter turns. The second is to count the number of outer-layer twists, called "face turns". A move to turn an outer layer two quarter (90°) turns in the same direction would be counted as two moves in the quarter turn metric (QTM), but as one turn in the face metric.
Rubik's Magic, like the Rubik's Cube, is a mechanical puzzle invented by Ernő Rubik and first manufactured by Matchbox in the mid-1980s.
The Pyraminx is a regular tetrahedron puzzle in the style of Rubik's Cube. It was made and patented by Uwe Mèffert after the original 3 layered Rubik's Cube by Ernő Rubik, and introduced by Tomy Toys of Japan in 1981.
David Breyer Singmaster is an emeritus professor of mathematics at London South Bank University, England. A self-described metagrobologist, he has a huge personal collection of mechanical puzzles and books of brain teasers. He is most famous for being an early adopter and enthusiastic promoter of the Rubik's Cube. His Notes on Rubik's "Magic Cube" which he began compiling in 1979 provided the first mathematical analysis of the Cube as well as providing one of the first published solutions. The book contained his cube notation which allowed the recording of Rubik's Cube moves, and which quickly became the standard.
Paul Hoffman is the president and CEO of the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, New Jersey. He is also a prominent author, science educator, food entrepreneur, Moth storyteller, and host of the PBS television series Great Minds of Science.
Perplexus is a 3-D ball-in-a-maze puzzle or labyrinth game enclosed in a transparent plastic sphere. By twisting and turning the sphere, players attempt to maneuver a small steel ball through an intricate maze composed of a number of steps along narrow plastic tracks. The number of steps ranges from 30 in the Perplexus Twist to 225 in the Perplexus 3x3 Rubik's cube Hybrid. Some of the steps involve dropping the ball into a cup or through a small rim to take advantage of its three-dimensional nature. There are obstacles of varying difficulty that must be navigated in order to reach the end.
Uwe Mèffert was a German puzzle designer and inventor. He manufactured and sold mechanical puzzles in the style of Rubik's Cube since the Cube craze of the 1980s. His first design was the Pyraminx – which he had developed before the original Rubik's Cube was invented. He created his own puzzle company and helped bring to market the Megaminx, Skewb, Skewb Diamond and many other puzzles.
Ideal Toy Company was an American toy company founded by Morris Michtom and his wife, Rose. During the post–World War II baby boom era, Ideal became the largest doll-making company in the United States. Their most popular dolls included Betsy Wetsy, Toni, Saucy Walker, Shirley Temple, Miss Revlon, Patti Playpal, Tammy, Thumbelina, Tiny Thumbelina, and Crissy. The company is also known for selling the Rubik's Cube.
The Sudoku Cube or Sudokube is a variation on a Rubik's Cube in which the faces have numbers one to nine on the sides instead of colours. The aim is to solve Sudoku puzzles on one or more of the sides. The toy was created in 2006 by Jay Horowitz in Sebring, Ohio.
The Rubik's Revolution is a handheld electronic game invented, designed, developed and patented by Rehco, LLC, a Chicago toy and game inventing firm. The Rubik's Revolution was formerly distributed by Techno Source and received the 2008 TOTY Game of the Year Award. Designed to resemble the classic Rubik's Cube puzzle, the device is a single rigid cube; it is about as large as a Professor's Cube, with each face subdivided into 9 square sub-faces. The center square of each face features a recessed LED-lit button colored to correspond with the stickers on the remaining squares. Gameplay involves pressing the buttons when they light up, or when directed to by the game's recorded voice.
The Rubik's Cube, a 1974 invention of Ernő Rubik of Hungary, fascinated people around the globe and became one of the most popular games in America in the early 1980s, having been initially released as the Magic Cube in Hungary in late 1977, and then re-manufactured and released in the western world as Rubik's Cube in 1980. As of January 2009, 350 million cubes have been sold worldwide making it the world's top-selling puzzle game. It earned a place as a permanent exhibit in New York’s Museum of Modern Art and entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 1982. The Cube retains a dedicated following, with almost 40,000 entries on YouTube featuring tutorials and video clips of quick solutions.
ThinkFun, formerly known as Binary Arts, is a toy and board game company founded in 1985 by Bill Ritchie and Andrea Barthello. The two started the company from the basement of their home in Virginia, with a product base that initially consisted of four games invented by a family friend William Keister. The husband and wife team used these products as a launching pad for their company, and within six months they were able to move the company headquarters out of their basement and into a more workable space and were able to begin to expand their product line.
Atari Video Cube is a puzzle video game developed by GCC for the Atari 2600 and published by Atari, Inc. in 1982. Atari Video Cube was sold exclusively through the Atari Club, run by Atari, Inc. Originally an unlicensed interpretation of the Rubik's Cube toy, Atari rereleased the game in 1984 as Rubik's Cube.
Anthony Michael Brooks is an American speed cubing champion. He specializes in the 2x2 cube and classic 3x3 cube, and has been officially ranked in the top five in the world in both categories as recognized by the World Cube Association. Since learning to solve the cube in March 2008, Brooks has become known for developing advanced speedsolving methods as well as frequently promoting speedcubing in the media. While working as the Liberty Science Center's Speedcuber-in-Residence, Brooks set the Guinness World Record for most Rubik's Cubes solved underwater in a single breath, and also led the team that currently holds the world record for solving the Groovik's Cube, the world's largest functioning Rubik's Cube. In July 2017, Brooks was featured on the debut season of FOX's Superhuman TV show.
Mark Setteducati is an American magician and inventor of magic, illusions, games and puzzles. He is also an author, known for the book, The Magic Show, and featured on PBS Inventors.
Larry D. Nichols, born 1939 in the United States, is a puzzle designer. He grew up in Xenia, Ohio, and studied chemistry at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, before moving to Massachusetts to attend Harvard Graduate School. He is best known for the invention of mechanical puzzles including 'The Nichols Cube Puzzle' (1974), patent US365520. He has lived with his wife Karen in Arlington, Massachusetts since 1959.
The Gear Cube is a 3-D combination puzzle designed and created by Dutch puzzle maker Oskar van Deventer based on an idea by Bram Cohen. It was initially produced by Shapeways in 2009 and known as "Caution Cube" due to the likelihood of getting one's fingers stuck between the gears while speedcubing. Later, in 2010, it was mass-produced by Meffert's as the "Gear Cube".
Prithveesh K. Bhat or Prathvish K. Bhat is an Indian Rubik's Cube speedcuber and mosaic artist. He has set several Rubik's Cube records, including two Guinness World Records namely ′Largest Dual Sided Rubik’s Cube Mosaic′, leading a team of 20 members and ′Most contributions to a Rubik's cube mosaic′, leading a team of 293 people.
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