Tower of Hanoi

Check out the original box cover of the famous Tower of Hanoi puzzle and the two-page instruction sheet that accompanied it (in French and it's English translation), thanks to Paul Stockmeyer. The puzzle was invented and marketed in 1883 by Professor N. CLAUS (DE SIAM) -- an anagram pseudonym for Professor Edouard LUCAS (D'AMEINS).

A post on the newsgroup rec.puzzle from 1993, citing Ball and Coxeter's Mathematical recreations and essays, claims that the following piece of ancient folklore associated with this puzzle was concocted by Henri De Parville in 1884.

"In the great temple at Benares, says he, beneath the dome which marks the centre of the world, rests a brass plate in which are fixed three diamond needles, each a cubit high and as thick as the body of a bee. On one of these needles, at the creation, God placed sixty-four discs of pure gold, the largest disc resting on the brass plate, and the others getting smaller and smaller up to the top one. This is the Tower of Bramah. Day and night unceasingly the priests transfer the discs from one diamond needle to another according to the fixed and immutable laws of Bramah, which require that the priest on duty must not move more than one disc at a time and that he must place this disc on a needle so that there is no smaller disc below it. When the sixty-four discs shall have been thus transferred from the needle on which at the creation God placed them to one of the other needles, tower, temple, and Brahmins alike will crumble into dust, and with a thunderclap the world will vanish.

The confirmation of these origins is the authoritative post by David Singmaster on the Historia Mathematica mailing list (February 11th, 2000). It mentions that apparently Robert Ripley was taken in by this story and included it in one of his early Believe It or Not books. Also see Singmaster's Queries on "Sources in recreational mathematics" for a treasure trove of trivia on common puzzles.