Surrounded by world cube champions, influencers and fans, Ernő Rubik said he felt the cube would be as relevant in the 21st century as it was when he first designed it in Cold War-era Hungary in 1974.

A lecturer of design at a technical university in Budapest, he used his cube as a teaching aid for mathematics.

Struck by its popularity with students, Rubik patented it, and it entered the global market at the end of the decade, becoming a worldwide craze in the 1980s.

More than 500 million units have since been produced.

The current world record for solving a randomly scrambled cube is just over three seconds, held by America’s Max Park, widely regarded as one of the greatest speedcubers of all time.

There are just over 43 quintillion possible combinations and orientations for the 26 different components.

The exact number of permutations is: 43,252,003,274,489,856,000, its makers say.