When was legos founded

A master joiner and carpenter, Christiansen opened a humble woodworking shop with his son Godtfred, just 12 years old at the time.

And play well they did. The company expanded from only six employees in to forty in LEGO was also fairly progressive, and became an early adopter of new technologies and materials.

In fact, the group became the first Danish company to own a plastic injection-molding machine. The bricks had pegs on top and hollow bottoms, allowing children to lock the bricks together and create elaborate structures never possible with the simple wooden blocks of yesteryear. The toy was inspired by a set of self-locking bricks invented by a British company, Kiddicraft. Godtfred Kirk Christiansen, President of the Lego company in Denmark, explains the Lego building toys to children, Christensen and his son, Godtfred, made improvements on the British design and began selling plastic bricks in That means that any LEGO block produced since can interlock with any other.

Today, that decision means big business. Watch a preview now. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Twice a week we compile our most fascinating features and deliver them straight to you. Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. The motto is still used within the company today.

It was his conversation with an overseas buyer that led to 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.

In , the modern brick design was developed, and it took another five years to find the right material for it, ABS acrylonitrile butadiene styrene polymer. The modern Lego brick was patented on 28 January In , Lego produced the first minifigures, which have since become a staple in most sets. New elements are often released along with new sets. There are also Lego sets designed to appeal to young girls such as the Belville and Clikits lines which consist of small interlocking parts that are meant to encourage creativity and arts and crafts, much like regular Lego bricks.

Belville and Clikit pieces can interlock with regular Lego bricks as decorative elements. Lego Fabuland ran from to The more advanced Lego Technic was launched in Lego Primo is a line of blocks by the Lego Group for very young children that ran between and In Lego Baby was launched for babies. The results will be shared with schools as part of an educational project. In May , the largest model ever created was displayed in New York, made of over 5 million bricks; a scale model of an X-Wing.