Puzzles/Tower of Hanoi

History

Tower of Hanoi is actually a puzzle game widely popularized by French mathematician Édouard Lucas in year of 1883.See pic 1
It can be also known by other names such as Tower of Brahma or The Lucas Tower. The origin of history is often disputed but most of the oral history mentions of Brahmin monks who are given a divine order from God to move 64 discs from smallest on top to largest of bottom to move through 3 towers guarding a Vietnamese temple. If they managed to complete the puzzles, the world would end.

The Tower of Hanoi consists of 3 sticks , 3 disc of varying sizes (big, middle and small) sizes.See pic 2
At the start of the game, one of the rods is stacked with the rings, starting from the smallest to the biggest ring. The challenge lies in moving this conical arrangement to another rod.

Rules of Tower of Hanoi

There are 3 general rules in solving the puzzles

• Only one disk can be moved at a time.
• Only the topmost disk can be removed.
• No disk can be placed on top of the smaller disk

Solutions

Below is the step by step guide on how Tower of Hanoi (4 discs) is solved.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Gallery

• 
  Pic 1: Édouard Lucas, first proposer to the Hanoi Tower Puzzles
• 
  Pic 2: The standard Tower of Hanoi with 3 disks

Bibliography

• http://www.towerofhanoi.org/
• http://historyrocket.com/miscellaneous/2010/4/History-of-Towers-of-Hanoi.html
• http://www.cs.wm.edu/~pkstoc/page_1.html