Logo

The story behind the BMC logo begins in the early 18th century, in the royal residence and capital city of Königsberg, Prussia, now Kaliningrad, Russia. Königsberg was located on the Sambia Peninsula and intersected by the Pregel river, which branched into the Old and New Pregel rivers. Today the Pregel is known as the Pregolya. Back then, there were seven bridges crossing the river.

It is said that the people of Königsberg held a competition to see whether it was possible to do a tour of the city by crossing each of the seven bridges just once before returning to the starting point.

This competition also became known as the ‘Seven Bridges of Königsberg Problem’ and puzzled scholars throughout the city. In 1736, the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler finally came up with evidence demonstrating that such a path could not exist.

Euler proved that at most two land masses could be connected by an uneven number of bridges. Any number of land masses exceeding this would require an even number of bridges. To solve this topological problem, Euler applied methods that later developed into graph theory. In general terms, we speak of the bridges as edges and the shores on the land masses as nodes.