Link with cool timeline The LEGO brick turns 50 at exactly 1:58 p.m. today, January 28, 2008. This timeline shows these 50 years of building frenzy by happy kids and kids-at-heart, all the milestones from the LEGOLAND themed sets to TECHNIC and MINDSTORMS NXT, as well as all kinds of weird curiosities about the most famous stud-and-tube couple system in the world. Jump to zoom in and tell us what was your first LEGO in the comments. It all first started in 1947, when LEGO bought their first plastic injection machine. The brick was not invented then but took final form in 1958, when the shape of the stud-and-tube brick was patented. Since then, LEGO sets have been going through dozens of iterations, from the younger version, DUPLO, to the most sophisticated LEGO TECHNIC and LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT sets, going through all the different themes of LEGOLAND and, of course, the most successful line of all times according to LEGO, LEGO Star Wars. LEGO brick curiosities • There are about 62 LEGO bricks for every one of the world's 6 billion inhabitants. • Children around the world spend 5 billion hours a year playing with LEGO bricks. • More than 400 million people around the world have played with LEGO bricks. • LEGO bricks are available in 53 different colors. • 19 billion LEGO elements are produced every year. • 2.16 million LEGO elements are molded every hour, or 36,000 per minute. • More than 400 billion LEGO bricks have been produced since 1949. • Two eight-stud LEGO bricks of the same color can be combined in 24 different ways. • Three eight-stud bricks can be combined in 1,060 ways. • There are more than 915 million combinations possible for six 2 x 4 LEGO bricks of the same color. • 7 LEGO sets are sold by retailers every second around the world. • The LEGO bricks sold in one year would circle the world 5 times. • 40 billion LEGO bricks stacked on top of one another would connect the earth with the moon. • LEGO bricks are so much more than just toys. They are used in classrooms from preschool to university level to teach everything from math, language skills and science to engineering and technology principles. • The LEGO brick has inspired generations of innovators, like Jonathan Gay, inventor of Flash. • World-renowned author Douglas Coupland believes the LEGO brick represents a "language in itself." • A January 2008 Google search produces 57.6 million references to LEGO bricks. • There are 55,600 LEGO videos on YouTube. • Google co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, used LEGO bricks to build the external low-cost and expandable casing for 10 4GB hard disks when they were busy developing the Google search engine (today, they have reportedly been used in Google's college graduate recruiting exercises to test potential candidate's creative horsepower). I still have all of my Lego bricks still in storage. The Space sets were my favorites, and I had the first several sets.
• Children around the world spend 5 billion hours a year playing with LEGO bricks. • More than 400 million people around the world have played with LEGO bricks. how the hell could ANYONE know that?
I still have tons of legos at my parent's house. I need to get them and bring them to my house. For -uh- my daughter. Yeah.
This is awesome, may have been posted already... http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/article.html?in_article_id=30901&in_page_id=2 Sometimes it is hard to let go of your boyhood hobbies. And in the case of Lego fan Malle Hawking, it has proved impossible. In his youth, the 36-year-old IT consultant loved nothing more than building miniature planes, trains and automobiles from the miniature bricks. But his latest project has been a little more ambitious – he has used 300,000 Lego bricks to construct a scale model of one of the largest ships afloat, the mighty USS Harry S Truman aircraft carrier. His model is now the largest Lego ship in the world, measuring 4.5m (14.7ft) and weighing more than 160kg (353lb). It has eaten up hundreds of hours in the planning and many more in its construction. His mission was to copy the life-size carrier down to the tiniest detail, even its lifebelts. He was undaunted by the fact that the real thing carries 85 warplanes and more than 5,000 airmen and crew. He said: 'I used to play and build Lego models when I was a boy, all my friends did as well. 'I stopped building in my teens but in February 2005, almost 20 years after the beginning of my so-called Dark Ages – when I did not have any Lego – I watched a documentary about aircraft carriers. 'I was so inspired I ran down to the cellar, poured my two boxes of Lego on to the floor and immediately started trying to build one of my own.' Using pictures from the Internet, the father-of-two from Munich, Germany, tried to copy the Harry S Truman over and over again until he got it right. 'I had only about 25 pictures from the Internet to work from and there were some real challenges in making the model the right size for Lego figures,' he revealed. The vessel will go on display in Cologne next month before going to the Brickworld 2007 Lego convention in Chicago. More pics here: http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-gadget/lego-aircraft-carrier
I took pictures of these when I was at the Lego store at Downtown Disney in California. <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/treymcglaun/CaliforniaTrip/photo#5129219159387695058"><img src="http://lh3.google.com/treymcglaun/Ry6lplJuZ9I/AAAAAAAAJzc/gEo-hpliJJs/s400/California%20Trip%202007-10%200006.JPG" /></a> <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/treymcglaun/CaliforniaTrip/photo#5129219167977629666"><img src="http://lh5.google.com/treymcglaun/Ry6lqFJuZ-I/AAAAAAAAJzo/3Hq3r46U-JE/s400/California%20Trip%202007-10%200007.JPG" /></a> <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/treymcglaun/CaliforniaTrip/photo#5129219176567564274"><img src="http://lh3.google.com/treymcglaun/Ry6lqlJuZ_I/AAAAAAAAJz0/SC8d0JEmKDc/s400/California%20Trip%202007-10%200008.JPG" /></a> <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/treymcglaun/CaliforniaTrip/photo#5129219202337368114"><img src="http://lh5.google.com/treymcglaun/Ry6lsFJuaDI/AAAAAAAAJ0o/uPLOerwRgf0/s400/California%20Trip%202007-10%200012.JPG" /></a> <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/treymcglaun/CaliforniaTrip/photo#5129219232402139266"><img src="http://lh4.google.com/treymcglaun/Ry6lt1JuaII/AAAAAAAAJ1k/LNkoV4Mv2cI/s400/California%20Trip%202007-10%200017.JPG" /></a> <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/treymcglaun/CaliforniaTrip/photo#5129219228107171954"><img src="http://lh3.google.com/treymcglaun/Ry6ltlJuaHI/AAAAAAAAJ1Y/QvTd3LdLfjs/s400/California%20Trip%202007-10%200016.JPG" /></a> <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/treymcglaun/CaliforniaTrip/photo#5129219215222270034"><img src="http://lh4.google.com/treymcglaun/Ry6ls1JuaFI/AAAAAAAAJ1A/3rOx7trhRDI/s400/California%20Trip%202007-10%200014.JPG" /></a> Growing up with Legos as a kid I thought it was awesome.
