Lego® is celebrating 50 glorious years today. I was reminded when I went to do a search on Google this morning and saw that their banner was celebrating the anniversary. We absolutely love playing with Lego bricks at our house. We started out with Duplo bricks including Bob the Builder and Thomas sets and are now venturing out to the 'bigger boy' brick sets like StarWars and SpongeBob. Just yesterday, Joey and I put set 7667 Imperial Dropship together. He assmebled the minifigs (4 stormtroopers), and I assembled the ship;-) But, our favorite kit recently was the SpongeBob Rocket Ride kit 3881. Joey and Johnny continue to play with that toy a lot even after the intial thrill of the assembly.
There's a great link on the Lego site to their company history. A few bullets that I thought particularly interesting are:
- The founder, Ole Kirk Christiansen, hit upon the LEGO® name in 1934. He took the first two letters of the Danish words LEG GODT, meaning “play well”, and put them together – quite unaware that one meaning of the word in Latin is ... “I put together”.
- During the moulding process, the plastic is heated to 232° C until its consistency is about that of dough. It is then injected into the moulds at a pressure of 25‑150 tons, depending on which element is being produced. It takes seven seconds to cool and eject new elements. The moulds used in production are accurate to within two‑thousandth of a millimeter (0.002 mm), and the accuracy of the moulding process means that only 18 elements in every million produced fail to meet the company’s high quality standard. All LEGO elements are fully compatible, irrespective when they were made during the period from 1958 to the present or by which factory.
- Over the years approx. 4 billion minifigures have been produced.
In addition, we also enjoy the Ultimate Lego Book. It's just crammed with interesting facts and picturs about Lego.
In honor of Lego, go forth and build!
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