LEGO - the “Toy of the Century” celebrates 50th Anniversary.
Warning - fan boy confession: I credit my Engineering Degree to playing with Lego Bricks ( sorry - not video games). No other toy fostered my imagination, problem solving, creativity, and analytical thinking more than the interlocking bricks did.
Even Google honored the toy maker by changing the style in which its name is spelled on its main site. Lego didn’t pay Google to commemorate the occasion, the spokeswoman said. The company advised Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the Lego fans who founded Mountain View, California-based Google, of the anniversary and they were happy to mark it, she said.
The LEGO history began in 1932 in Denmark, when Ole Kirk Christansen founded a small factory for wooden toys in the unknown town of Billund in the south of the country. To find a name for his company he organized a competition among his employees. As fate would have it however, he himself came up with the best name: LEGO – a fusion of the Danish words “LEg” and “GOdt”(“play well”).
Barely 15 years later Christiansen discovered plastic as the ideal material for toy production, and bought the first injection moulding machine in Denmark. His courage, input and investment paid off: in 1949 he developed the LEGO brick prototype, which continues to excite countless children and adults to this very day. Over the years he perfected the brick, which is still the basis of the entire LEGO game and building system today. Of course there have been small adjustments in shape, colour and design from time to time, but today’s LEGO bricks still fit bricks from 1958. Production of LEGO bricks with Acrylonitrile Butadine Styrene (ABS) began in 1963. This matt finish plastic is extremely hard, has a scratch and bite-resistant surface, and is ideal for keeping the bricks connected. LEGO labs regularly monitor the high quality of the ABS for the bricks. LEGO bricks in boxes that are not sold are melted again and turned into new bricks, in accordance with waste prevention and environmental responsibility.
“Seven boxes of Lego are sold every second around the world, and 19 billion components are produced each year — enough to wrap around the Earth’s circumference five times.”
You can’t really go wrong with any LEGO set, or any LEGO video game for that matter - but if I had to recommend one, it would be the LEGO Mindstorm NXT (10+).
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