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Lego - Early History |
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The Lego Group had a very humble beginning in the workshop of Ole Kirk Christiansen,
a carpenter from Billund, Denmark. Christiansen began creating wooden toys in 1932;
the company began calling itself "Lego" two years later in 1934. The company expanded
to producing plastic toys in 1940. In 1949, Lego began producing the now-famous
interlocking bricks, calling them "Automatic Binding Bricks". These bricks were
based largely on the design of Kiddicraft Self-Locking Bricks, which were released
in the UK in 1947. 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.
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The company name Lego was coined by Christiansen from the Danish phrase leg godt,
which means "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 "lego" also means "gather, pick
up", but this can include constructing a stone wall. The Lego Group's motto is
"Only the best is good enough", translated from the Danish phrase, Det bedste er
ikke for godt. This motto was created by Ole Kirk to encourage his employees never
to skimp on quality, a value he believed in strongly. The motto is still used within
the company today. 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 Kirk Christiansen, 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. The modern Lego brick was patented on January 28, 1958, and bricks from
that year are still compatible with current bricks.
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