Lego
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lego is a line of toys manufactured by Lego Group, a privately held company based in Denmark. Its flagship product, commonly referred to as Lego, consists of colourful interlocking plastic bricks and an accompanying array of gears, minifigures (also called minifigs by Lego fans), and other pieces which can be assembled and connected in a myriad combinations, including cars, trucks, planes, trains, buildings, castles, sculptures, ships, spaceships, and even working robots.
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[edit] Early history
- See also: Lego timeline
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". (For other translations, see Trivia below.)
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.
[edit] Design and Manufacture
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 2007, and Lego sets for young children are compatible with those made for teenagers.
Bricks, beams, axles, mini figures, 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 2 µm.[1]
Since 1963, Lego pieces have been 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 eighteen bricks out of every million fail to meet its stringent standards.[1]
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 × 1010) per year, or about 600 pieces per second.
[edit] Lego today
Since it began producing plastic bricks, the Lego Group has released thousands of play sets themed around space, robots, pirates, vikings, ninjas, 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. New elements are often released along with new sets. There are also Lego sets designed to appeal to young girls such as the Clikits line which consists of small interlocking parts that are meant to encourage creativity and arts and crafts, much like regular Lego bricks. Clikit pieces can interlock with regular Lego bricks as decorative elements.
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.
In 2006 a new Lego Mindstorms kit called Mindstorms NXT was released. It is more advanced than the RCX, has a bigger screen than 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 and receive messages from one's cellphone and other Bluetooth compatible devices. The RCX was only compatible with PC, but NXT is compatible with both PC and Mac.
There are several robotics competitions which use Lego bricks and the RCX. The earliest, and likely the largest, is Botball, a national U.S. 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.
BIONICLE is a line of toys by the Lego Group that is marketed towards those in the 7–16-year-old range. The line was launched in January 2001 in Europe and June/July 2001 in the United States. The Bionicle idea originated from the earlier toy lines Slizers (also known as Throwbots) and Roboriders. Both of these lines had similar throwing disks and characters based on classical elements.
Lego Group operates four Legoland amusement parks, three in Europe and one in California. On July 13, 2005, the control of 70% of the Legoland parks was sold for $460 million 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.
Lego has also successfully branched into video games that appeal to a wide age range, with titles like Lego Star Wars: The Video Game, and an upcoming Lego MMORPG.
- Further information: Minifigures
[edit] Lego in art
One hobby among enthusiasts is to make short movies (or re-create popular scenes from famous movies, like Romeo and Juliet) using Lego bricks. Such movies are called "Lego movies", "Brickfilms", "Legomations", 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 do not 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 Legostar Galactica and Irregular Webcomic!.
Mr. Amperduke is a silent graphic novel featuring Lego type creatures which originally appeared in the British comic Judge Dredd Megazine
The Reverand Brendan Powell Smith has created an illustrated bible using Legos, called the Brick Testament.
[edit] Lego Serious Play
Since around 2000, the Lego Group has been promoting Lego Serious Play, a form of business consultancy fostering creative thinking, in which team members build metaphors of their organisational identities and experiences using Lego bricks. Participants work through imaginary scenarios using visual three-dimensional Lego constructions, imaginatively exploring possibilities in a serious form of play.
[edit] The Lego trademark
The LEGO Group's name has become so synonymous with its flagship toy that many refer to the bricks themselves (collectively) as "Lego" or "Legos" (the latter term being common in US English, but rarely used in British English), although the Lego Group considers such uses to be trademark dilution. 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."
The official LEGO website is http://www.lego.com. For many years, visitors to http://www.legos.com (also registered to the Lego Group) have received notices similar to the one pictures, and were intentionally redirected to the official website, to further protect the brand.
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.
[edit] 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 | 8,274,075,616,387 |
- 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.[2]
- The Lego Group produces over 305 million miniature tires each year - more than any other tire manufacturer in the world.[3]
- Six eight-stud Lego bricks of the same color can be put together in 915,103,765 ways, and just three bricks of the same color 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).[4]
- In Gothenburg there is a building called The Lego House because it looks as though it is constructed of Lego bricks.
- "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.
- Motto: det bedste er ikke for godt. Danish for "Only the best is good enough" or literally "The best is not too good." This motto was created by Ole Kirk to encourage his employees never to skimp on quality, a value he believed in strongly.
- On average, everyone in the world has 52 Lego bricks each.[5]
[edit] References
[edit] See also
- LUGNET Lego Users Group Network
[edit] Further reading
- Bagnall, Brian. "Maximum LEGO® NXT: Building Robots with Java Brains". Variant Press. 2007. ISBN 0-9738649-1-5
- Bagnall, Brian. "Core LEGO® Mindstorms". Prentice-Hall PTR. 2002. ISBN 0-13-009364-5
- Bedford, Allan. The Unofficial LEGO® Builder's Guide. San Francisco: No Starch Press, 2005. ISBN 1-59327-054-2.
- Clague, Kevin, Miguel Agullo, and Lars C. Hassing. LEGO® Software Power Tools, With LDraw, MLCad, and LPub. 2003. ISBN 1-931836-76-0
- Courtney, Tim. Virtual LEGO®: The Official LDraw.org Guide to LDraw Tools for Windows. San Francisco: No Starch Press, 2003. ISBN 1-886411-94-8.
- McKee, Jacob H. Getting Started with LEGO® Trains. San Francisco: No Starch Press, 2003. ISBN 1-59327-006-2.
- Ferrari, Mario, Giulio Ferrari, and Ralph Hempel. Building Robots With LEGO® Mindstorms: The Ultimate Tool for Mindstorms Maniacs. 2001. ISBN 1-928994-67-9.
- Kristiansen, Kjeld Kirk, foreword. The Ultimate LEGO® Book. New York: DK Publishing Book, 1999. ISBN 0-7894-4691-X.
- Wiencek, Henry. The World of LEGO® Toys. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, 1987. ISBN 0-8109-2362-9.
[edit] External links
- Official
- Community
- LUGNET - LEGO users group network.
- MOC Pages - Display and rate Lego creations.
- Brickshelf - Website to host pictures of Lego creations.
- EUROBRICKS - European Lego fansite discussion board.
- Database and Reference
- BrickWiki Open Content Lego Encyclopedia
- Wiki-Brick-Links Open directory of links to Lego web sites
- Peeron Lego Set and Part Inventory Database
- BRICKSET Guide to Lego sets past and present
| Lego | History of Lego | Timeline | |
| Products: | Themes | Computer and video games | Lego Board Games | Mindstorms | Duplo | Pneumatics | Lego Baby | Minifigures | Trains |
|---|---|
| People: | Ole Kirk Christiansen | Godtfred Kirk Christiansen | Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen | Jørgen Vig Knudstorp |
| Legoland: | Legoland Billund | Legoland California | Legoland Deutschland | Legoland Windsor |
| Other: | AFOL | The Brick Testament | BrickFest | Brickfilm | FIRST Lego League | Irregular Webcomic! | L gauge | LDraw | Lego Serious Play | Lego Magazine | LUGNET | MLCAD | Robofest |
