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Cubing History

Purpose​

This website was created to serve as an archive of cubing history. The history of the community has been poorly documented so this is an attempt to recover and preserve the important information. This is the result of many hours of studying various message boards, mailing lists, newsletters, books, conversing with others through private messages, and many years of my own experience and knowledge since joining the community in 2005. Cubing has moved from being in books in the late 70s and early 80s to now being within internet discussions. Cubing History consists of book references and screenshots and links from the original online messages. All content on the site is original research starting from the very beginning of each subject. Nothing is taken from any wiki pages or similar sources.

If you want to use anything from this website, feel free to do so. I only ask that you credit the site and me for the research that I have done (my name is Michael James Straughan). If you want to contact me, send me an email at athefre@gmail.com. I go by the username Athefre in the various puzzle communities such as speedsolving.com and various Discord servers, so you can also contact me there. Some of the images may be more complicated, so please talk to me before using those.

Visit my personal website to see my method developments

Major Historical Discoveries​

Below are some of the historical discoveries that have been uncovered while building Cubing History.

  • The origin of the F2L pair technique. Many thought that it was from Rene Schoof because he was credited in the September 1981 issue of Cubism For Fun. But there are several publications of the technique before then. The earliest known publication is by John Conway, David Benson, and David Seal in 1979 that included a complete table of every possible case. It also did PLL then OLL as the last layer method.
  • Cross and the Layer By Layer method wasn't first created by Singmaster as the community believes. Nor did Singmaster claim to have created them. He states in Notes on Rubik’s ‘Magic Cube’ that he had seen the method before and changed his method to his own version of that. The earliest known publication of the Layer By Layer method, starting with cross, is by Donald Taylor in 1978.
  • The standard notation isn’t all Singmaster. Only the U, D, L, R, F, B outer turn notation, the apostrophe for inverse, and the 2 for double turns are attributed to Singmaster. Rotations, wide turns, and other parts of the notation were created by other people.
  • The earliest known published Corners First and Edges First methods. One of the early Edges First methods was published by Zoltán Perjés, a relative of Ernő Rubik.
  • An instance of early corner permutation by Lars Petrus in 1996.

Cubing History Standards​

Attribution​

When providing credit for a contribution, Cubing History follows a set of attribution standards:

  • Substantial Contribution: Creation or proposal credit goes to the person or group who both had the idea and significantly contributed to its development. If the idea had already been proposed by others, but abandoned or not pursued, credit goes to the person or group who developed it.

  • Early Suggestion: If a person or group simply mentioned an idea and didn't follow it up with development effort, credit isn't given as a creator or proposer. However, these early suggestions are still provided as an interesting part of history.

There are some grey areas. Someone may have suggested the idea first and partially developed it. Or someone may have independently fully developed an idea without knowledge that the idea already existed and was fully developed. In these cases, a community consensus is followed.

One example is the ZZ method. The method has a complicated history. Essentially, the idea goes back to Gilles Roux and Adam Géhin, made its way to Ryan Heise, then Ron van Bruchem, and, finally, Zbignew Zborowski. Even though four people prior to Zborowski had experimented with the idea, and Zborowski seemingly got the idea of EOLine from Bruchem, credit for the proposal and creation is given to Zborowski. This is because Zborowski is the first to show confidence in the idea and to develop it, going as far as creating a detailed website and promoting it.

Classification​

Method classification has been an evolving subject. When the cube was first introduced, the three primary methods were Corners First, Edges First, and Layer By Layer. Every small difference in the steps of each was cause for it to be a completely different method. Now the community consensus is that the various ways of solving the edges in Corners First or the last layer in Layer By Layer are minor variants of those methods.

Cubing History follows a classification standard based on the modern development community opinion. Minor changes to a method most often result in a variant of that method. A major example is last slot methods. MGLS, ZB, and others used to be considered full methods of their own. However, in recent years, the development community opinion has shifted toward classifying such systems as last slot and last layer variants or steps. Simplified, they are referred to as LSLL methods. It makes sense to consider them variants or steps not only because they are minor alterations, but also because they can be used in other methods that end with a final corner and edge pair slot.

Cubing History Origin​

Since I joined the community, I have always been interested in method development. From the very beginning I was trying out others' methods, developing my own methods, and updating the SpeedSolving.com wiki with the origins of methods. In May of 2020 I decided to start working on a timeline that covers the very beginning through now. That simple idea, and the subsequent research, turned into a 47 page Word document full of notes, links, and ideas. I decided that all of that content would be great to have in book form. I started structuring and writing the book and created a website on Google Sites just as a way to organize my resources for the book. I then realized that the website would be exactly what the community needed as a way to view the history of methods. Over time the site expanded to include more than just the history of methods. In 2024 I moved the website to a custom domain with a focus on the history of every aspect of cubing.

Credit​

Thanks to err0rcuber for assisting with numerous things to get the site looking the way it does:

  • Recommended Docusaurus for the site.
  • Helped fix problems during the setup process.
  • Set up AnimCubeJS on the site to allow cube applets to be used.
  • Got archive html links working. This allowed for linking to html pages of old websites that are now stored here.

Georges Helm was kind enough to look through the books that he owns and confirm my suspicions and provide me details. Helm sent me a lot of information and hand written descriptions of the steps within numerous books. Some of this information changed the history that was previously thought, especially as it relates to Layer By Layer and CFOP.

Ron van Bruchem also provided some information about early method development.

Others have been very willing to explain the origin of their own developments. Each person is credited on the site in the area in which they provided help.