The Rubik’s cube, Tetris, the AK-47 and other surprising innovations of the former Eastern Bloc
- From: News Corp Australia Network
- May 21, 2014
INNOVATION was not the sole preserve of the west during the long strange years of the cold war.
Despite the closed nature of the Eastern Bloc countries, and the controlled nature of their economies, inventors continued to design new products.
Many of these inventions, like the Trabant cars, faux-denim pants and coffee blends devised in the former East Germany, never made it to the other side of the iron curtain.
But a few products and innovations did manage to traverse that barrier, and went on to change the world.
Here are just a few of them.
THE Rubik’s cube officially turned 40 this week, but it languished for several years in the Eastern Bloc before a sharp-eyed product manager spotted it at the Nuremburg Toy Fair in 1979. Designed by Hungarian architect Erno Rubik, it was originally not created as a toy at all, but as a geometric model. It became a worldwide sensation in the early 1980s, and remains the biggest-selling toy of all time, with over 350 million units sold. Its appeal lies its complexity, and the fact that it allows those who solve the puzzle the opportunity to lord it over those among us who can’t. British Labor leader Ed Miliband boasted in 2011 that he could complete the Rubik’s cube in 90 seconds, leading him to surmise that he had “more intellectual confidence than David Cameron”.
Erno Rubik has enjoyed the fruits of his success and invented a number of other puzzles — and in his latter years invested time and resources into the promotion of science in education.
LIKE the Rubik’s cube, the video game Tetris represents a perfect blend of simplicity and fiendish difficulty. Programmed by Moscow-based developer Alexey Pajitnov, it was released on June 6, 1984, and went on to become the first video game exported from the USSR to the western world. As of 2010, some 70 million Tetris games had been sold, with a further 100 million copies downloaded for mobile phones. Its enduring popularity was honoured in the closing ceremony of the Sochi Winter Olympic Games earlier this year, with dancers representing the familiar coloured shapes that gamers are required to fit together.
As for its inventor? Because he was a Soviet government government, Pajitnov did not receive royalties — but he moved to the US in 1991 and began working for Microsoft.
AK-47 ASSAULT RIFLE
THE AK-47 — “Avtomat Kalashnikov’’ and the year it went into production — is the world’s most popular firearm, with an estimated 100 million of the guns spread worldwide.
Though it isn’t especially accurate, its ruggedness and simplicity are exemplary: it performs in sandy or wet conditions that jam more sophisticated weapons such as the US M-16.
“During the Vietnam War, American soldiers would throw away their M-16s to grab AK-47s and bullets for it from dead Vietnamese soldiers,’’ its Russian inventor Mikhail Kalashnikov boasted in 2007.
Kalashnikov was inspired to design a new gun after being injured by Nazis in a World War Two battle.
During his career, he was decorated with numerous honours, including the Hero of Socialist Labor and Order of Lenin and Stalin Prize. But because his invention was never patented, he didn’t get rich off royalties.
“At that time in our country patenting inventions wasn’t an issue. We worked for Socialist society, for the good of the people, which I never regret,’’ he once said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin hailed the rifle as “a symbol of the creative genius of our people” in a 2007 speech.
Kalashnikov died in December 2013, aged 94.
THE swift start that the Soviet Union got in the space race is well documented. They put the first dog in space, and Yuri Gagarin became the first man in orbit in 1961.
The Soviets also lay claim to the invention of the space station, with a number of modules even predating the Mir space station, which orbited the planet for 15 years between 1986 and 2001.
Salyut 1, the prototype space station, went into orbit in 1971, and was home to three cosmonauts for a total of 23 days. However all the crew died when their vehicle failed upon re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere. The station itself fell to Earth within six months. Five more Salyut space stations were successfully put into orbit and inhabited before Mir’s launch in 1986.
THE modern system of designating postal address areas via numbers was originally introduced in Ukraine in 1932, when the county was part of the USSR. They dropped the system in 1939, but it was reintroduced in Germany in 1941. There were of course earlier versions of a postal address system developed for some localities — London was split into 10 districts in the mid 19th century — but the UK as a whole did not receive postcodes until much later (they were phase in between 1959 and 1974).