   #copyright

Lego

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Games

   The classic red 2x4 Lego brick. Note the protruding interlocking "stud"
   mechanism atop the brick.
   Enlarge
   The classic red 2x4 Lego brick. Note the protruding interlocking "stud"
   mechanism atop the brick.

   Lego is a line of toys manufactured by Lego Group, a privately held
   company based in Denmark. Its flagship product, also commonly referred
   to as Lego, consists of colorful interlocking plastic bricks and an
   accompanying array of gears, minifigures (also called minifigs or "Lego
   People"), and other pieces which can be assembled and connected in
   myriad combinations. Many interlocking accessories, including cars,
   planes, trains, buildings, castles, sculptures, ships, spaceships, and
   even working robots are available for purchase. Lego bricks are noted
   for their precision and quality of manufacture, resulting in an
   inexpensive yet uniformly high-quality product.

Early history

   A Chrysler Building replica made entirely of Lego bricks, on display at
   the Times Square location of Toys "R" Us in New York City.
   Enlarge
   A Chrysler Building replica made entirely of Lego bricks, on display at
   the Times Square location of Toys "R" Us in New York City.
   Lego sets feature a large variety of themed people (called
   “minifigures”), including the Space, Castle, and City figures above.
   Enlarge
   Lego sets feature a large variety of themed people (called
   “minifigures”), including the Space, Castle, and City figures above.

   The Lego Group had very humble beginnings in the workshop of Ole Kirk
   Christiansen, a poor carpenter from Billund, Denmark. Christiansen
   started creating wooden toys in 1932, however in 1947, he and his son
   Godtfred Kirk Christiansen obtained samples of interlocking plastic
   bricks produced by the company Kiddicraft. These "Kiddicraft
   Self-Locking Building Bricks" were designed and patented in the UK by
   Hilary Harry Fisher Page, a child psychologist. A few years later, in
   1949, Lego began producing similar bricks, calling them "Automatic
   Binding Bricks." The first Lego bricks, manufactured from cellulose
   acetate, were developed in the spirit of traditional wooden blocks that
   could be stacked upon one another; however, these plastic bricks could
   be "locked" together. They had several round "studs" on top, and a
   hollow rectangular bottom. The blocks snapped together, but not so
   tightly that they could not be pulled apart.

   The company name Lego was coined by Christiansen from the Danish phrase
   leg godt, which means "play well".

   The use of plastic for toy manufacture was not highly regarded by
   retailers and consumers of the time. Many of the Lego Group's shipments
   were returned, following poor sales; it was thought that plastic toys
   could never replace wooden ones.

   By 1954, Christiansen's son, Godtfred, had become the junior managing
   director of the Lego Group. It was his conversation with an overseas
   buyer that struck the idea of a toy system. Godtfred saw the immense
   potential in Lego bricks to become a system for creative play, but the
   bricks still had some problems from a technical standpoint: their
   "locking" ability was limited, and they were not very versatile. It was
   not until 1958 that the modern-day brick design was developed, and it
   took another five years to find exactly the right material for it.

Design and manufacture

   Since their introduction in 1949, Lego pieces of all varieties have
   been, first and foremost, part of a universal "system". Despite
   tremendous variation in the design and purpose of individual pieces
   over the years, each remains compatible in some way with existing
   pieces. Lego bricks from 1963 still interlock with those made in 2006,
   and Lego sets for young children are compatible with those made for
   teenagers.

   Bricks, beams, axles, minifigures, and all other elements in the Lego
   system are manufactured to an exacting degree of tolerance. When
   snapped together, pieces must have just the right amount of "clutch
   power"; they must stay together until pulled apart. They cannot be too
   easy to pull apart, or the resulting constructions would be unstable;
   they also cannot be too difficult to pull apart, since the disassembly
   of one creation in order to build another is part of the Lego appeal.
   In order for pieces to have just the right "clutch power", Lego
   elements are manufactured within a tolerance of two-thousandths of a
   millimeter (0.002 mm).

   Since 1963, Lego pieces are manufactured from a strong, resilient
   plastic known as acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, or ABS.
   Precision-machined, small-capacity moulds are used, and human
   inspectors check the output of the moulds, to eliminate significant
   variations in colour or thickness. Worn-out moulds are encased in the
   foundations of buildings to prevent their falling into competitors'
   hands. According to the Lego Group, its moulding processes are so
   accurate that only 18 bricks out of every million fail to meet its
   stringent standards. It is thanks to this care in manufacturing that
   the Lego Group has maintained such a high degree of quality over the
   decades.

   Manufacturing of Lego bricks occurs at a number of locations around the
   world. Moulding is done at one of two plants in Denmark and
   Switzerland. Brick decorations and packaging is done at plants in
   Denmark, Switzerland, United States, South Korea and the Czech
   Republic. Annual production of Lego bricks averages approximately 20
   billion (2 × 10^10) per year, or about 600 pieces per second.

Lego today

   A model of Trafalgar Square, London in Legoland Windsor.
   Enlarge
   A model of Trafalgar Square, London in Legoland Windsor.
   A Lego City.
   Enlarge
   A Lego City.

   Since it began producing plastic bricks, the Lego Group has released
   thousands of play sets themed around space, robots, pirates, vikings,
   medieval castles, dinosaurs, cities, suburbia, holiday locations, wild
   west, the Arctic, airports, boats, racing cars, trains, Star Wars,
   Harry Potter, Spider-Man, Batman, SpongeBob SquarePants, Avatar: The
   Last Airbender and more. As always, new Lego pieces are released
   frequently along with new sets.

   Recently, the Lego line has expanded to encompass accessory motors,
   gears, lights, sensors, and cameras designed to be used with Lego
   components. There are even special bricks, like the LEGO RCX that can
   be programmed with a PC to perform very complicated and useful tasks.
   These programmable bricks are sold under the name Lego Mindstorms.

   There has been a recent update of Lego Mindstorms called Lego
   Mindstorms NXT. It is more advanced, has a bigger screen on the RCX,
   and has a new array of sensors. They include touch, sound, light, and a
   new ultrasonic sensor technology. There is also a Bluetooth compatible
   hookup that can send messages to your cellphone, and other Bluetooth
   compatible devices.

   There are several competitions which use Lego bricks and the RCX, among
   other microcontrollers, for robotics. The earliest, and likely the
   largest, is Botball, a national US middle- and high-school competition
   stemming from the MIT 6.270 lego robotics tournament. A related
   competition is FIRST Lego League for elementary and middle schools. The
   international RoboCup Junior autonomous soccer competition involves
   extensive use of Lego Mindstorms equipment which is often pushed to its
   limits.

   Lego Group operates several Legoland amusement parks in Europe and
   California. On July 13, 2005 the control of 70% of the Lego Amusement
   Parks was sold for $460 million dollars to the Blackstone Group of New
   York while the remaining 30% is still held by the Lego Group. There are
   also several Lego Brand retail stores, including at Downtown Disney in
   both the Disneyland and Walt Disney World Resorts and in the Mall of
   America in Bloomington, Minnesota. As of year end 2005, there are 25
   LEGO Brand Retail stores in the USA, a number of stores in Europe, and
   a franchised LEGO store in Abu Dhabi.

Fan culture and community

   LEGO display at the Mall of America.
   Enlarge
   LEGO display at the Mall of America.

   Lego bricks today are used for purposes beyond children's play. The
   Lego Group itself has developed a form of business consultancy
   fostering creative thinking, called Lego Serious Play, in which team
   members build metaphors of their organisational experiences using Lego
   bricks, and work through imaginary scenarios using the visual device of
   the Lego constructions and by exploring possibilities in a 'serious'
   form of 'play'.

   A cult following of people who have used Lego pieces to make
   sculptures, very large mosaics and complex machines has developed. Some
   sculptures use hundreds of thousands of pieces and weigh tens of
   kilograms. Large mosaics, fully functional padlocks and pendulum
   clocks, a harpsichord and an inkjet printer (built by Google co-founder
   Larry Page while at the University of Michigan) have been constructed
   from Lego pieces. One such masterpiece solves a Rubik's Cube through
   the use of Lego motors and cameras, a task that many humans cannot
   accomplish. Photos of many fan creations like these can be seen at
   Brickshelf and at MOCpages. A group which calls itself " AFOLs" (for
   "Adult Fans of Lego") is an important demographic for The Lego Group,
   which has recently begun reintroducing popular sets from previous years
   to appeal to this group.

   Lego toys have been used in a number of unexpected ways. For example,
   at The Brick Testament "The Reverend" Brendan Powell Smith has built
   the Bible in Lego pieces. The site features over 2,000 photographs of
   Biblical scenes. Legowars, the generic term for a number of wargames
   (most notably Brikwars) involving Lego bricks enjoys a cult-like
   popularity. The website theory.org.uk (by academic David Gauntlett)
   features Lego versions of social theorists. A set of software tools
   called LDraw or LEGO Digital Designer can be used to model possible
   Lego creations in 3D. Because of the high degree of uniformity in Lego
   bricks, they have also been used in fields such as computer vision, in
   which knowing the exact dimensions and relative positions of objects is
   useful for creating test data. Another novel application of Lego bricks
   is the combination of bricks and electronic components to obtain a Lego
   Electronic Lab Kit.

   A growing application for AFOLs is 'cooperative building", the goal
   being to produce vast displays for Lego shows and fan meets. Moonbase
   is a Space LEGO building system comprised of individual "modules" built
   by hundreds of different LEGO builders. These individual modules join
   together to create large layouts at LEGO conventions and gatherings.
   Another example of cooperative building is "The Great Ball Contraption"
   in which enthusiasts are requested to build a machine of carefully
   specified dimensions that is handed a Lego soccer ball once every
   second or so. Its job is to do something interesting with the ball and
   then passes it on to another contraption. By connecting a long chain of
   such machines together, a vast Rube Goldberg system can be assembled
   that 'processes' soccer balls from one end of the system to the other
   having passed each ball through the entire chain of contraptions. Other
   examples are medieval castles and train layouts.

Lego in art

   The Walt Disney World Resort features a sculpture of the Loch Ness
   Monster made of Lego bricks.
   Enlarge
   The Walt Disney World Resort features a sculpture of the Loch Ness
   Monster made of Lego bricks.

   One hobby among enthusiasts is to make short movies (or re-create
   popular scenes from famous movies), using Lego bricks. Such movies are
   called "Lego movies", " Brickfilms", or "cinema Lego". They usually use
   stop motion animation. For example, the Monty Python and the Holy Grail
   special edition DVD contained a version of the "Camelot" musical
   sequence redone with Lego minifigures and accessories.

   Lego used to sell a line of sets named "LEGO Studios" (now
   discontinued), which contains a Lego web cam (repackaged Logitech USB
   Quickcam Web), software to record video on a computer, black plastic
   rods which can be used to manipulate minifigures from off-camera and a
   minifigure resembling Steven Spielberg. Because of the low quality of
   the camera and software most Brickfilmers don't use it.

   Lego bricks have been used to recreate many music videos. Examples
   include a re-dubbed version of the song " Dragostea Din Tei" by O-Zone,
   and " Feuer Frei" by Rammstein.

   Another notable example is the award-winning music video for the song "
   Fell in Love with a Girl" by the White Stripes. Director Michel Gondry
   filmed a live version of the video, digitized the result and then
   recreated it entirely with Lego bricks.

   Artists have also used Lego sets with one of the more notorious
   examples being Polish artist Zbigniew Libera's " Lego Concentration
   Camp", a collection of mocked-up concentration camp-themed Lego sets.

   The Little Artists have created an entire Modern Art collection in a
   Lego Gallery. ' Art Craziest Nation' was shown at the Walker Art
   Gallery in Liverpool, UK.

   Several webcomics are illustrated with Lego, notably ' Irregular
   Webcomic'.

The Lego trademark

   The Lego Group's name has become so synonymous with its flagship toy
   that many use "Legos" or "Lego" (collectively) to refer to the bricks
   themselves, though the Lego Group considers such use a dilution of
   their trademark. Lego catalogues in the 1970s and 1980s contained a
   note that read:

     "The word LEGO® is a brand name and is very special to all of us in
     the LEGO Group Companies. We would sincerely like your help in
     keeping it special. Please always refer to our bricks as 'LEGO
     Bricks or Toys' and not 'LEGOS.' By doing so, you will be helping to
     protect and preserve a brand of which we are very proud and that
     stands for quality the world over. Thank you! Susan Williams,
     Consumer Services."

   A similar message also appeared to everyone who errantly visited
   http://www.legos.com/ in the year 2005, however it was removed within
   the next several months.

   "Lego" is officially written in all uppercase letters. The company
   asserts that to protect its brand name, the word Lego must always be
   used as an adjective, as in "LEGO set," "LEGO products," "LEGO
   universe," and so forth. Nevertheless, such corporate admonitions are
   frequently ignored and the word lego is commonly used not only as a
   noun to refer to Lego bricks, but also as a generic term referring to
   any kind of interlocking toy brick.

Trivia

      The number of contiguous
   configurations for one through
   eight 2x4 bricks, counting
   reflections but not rotations
   Bricks Configurations
     1    1
     2    24
     3    1,560
     4    119,580
     5    10,116,403
     6    915,103,766
     7    85,747,377,755
     8    721,548,684,485,456

     * The word "Lego" comes from Danish leg godt which translates to
       "play well". The name could also be interpreted as "I put together"
       or "I assemble" in Latin, though this would be a somewhat forced
       application of the general sense "I collect; I gather; I learn";
       the word is most used in the derived sense, "I read". The cognate
       Greek verb "λέγω" also means "gather, pick up", but this can
       include constructing a stone wall.
     * The Lego Group is the largest tire manufacturer in the world,
       producing over 300 million miniature tires each year.
     * Six eight-stud Lego bricks of the same colour can be put together
       in 915,103,765 ways, and just three bricks of the same colour offer
       1,560 combinations. The figure of 102,981,500 is often given for
       six pieces, but it is incorrect. The number 102,981,504 (four more
       than that figure) is the number of six-piece towers (of a height of
       six).
     * In Gothenburg there is a building called The Lego House because it
       looks like Lego.
     * "Legot" (or "leegot"), plural form of "lego" (or "leego") is used
       as a Finnish slang term for human teeth, because of the rectangular
       shape of the teeth.

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