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Title

The Tower and Triangles of Professor Claus (or, Pascal Knows Hanoi)
Author

D. Poole
Journal / Anthology

Mathematics Magazine
Year: 1994
Volume: 67
Issue: 5
Page range: 323-344
Description

It is a tribute to its inventor that, more than a century after its introduction, the famous Tower of Hanoi puzzle still holds some challenges and surprises for puzzle-enthusiasts, mathematicians and computer scientists. The first version was produced in Paris in 1883 by a certain "Prof. Claus." It consisted of three wooden pegs affixed to a base and a tower of eight disks of different diameters on one of the pegs, no disk resting on a smaller one. The object of the puzzle is to transfer the tower to a different peg, moving one topmost disk at a time in such a way that no disk is ever placed on a smaller one.
Subjects

*Mathematics > Discrete Mathematics > Combinatorics
*Mathematics > Recreational Mathematics
URL

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/TowerofHanoi.html