Egyptian Lego Creation

egyptianbuild, originally uploaded by Brickbaron.

Happy Half Century LEGO

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the patenting of LEGO.

it marks the 50th anniversary of when the original Lego brick was patented in Copenhagen by Godtfred Christiansen, the son of carpenter Ole Kirk Christiansen. The patent for the eight-stud brick, which has since expired, included plastic tubes inside the bricks so it could grip from above and below.

My brother and I were always jelous of our cousin Scott who had a fantastic LEGO collection. I don't remember having much.

The manufacturing process is very exacting.

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.[2]

Since 1963, Lego pieces have been manufactured from a strong, resilient plastic known as acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, or ABS. Precision-machined, small-capacity molds are used, and human inspectors check the output of the molds, to eliminate significant variations in color or thickness. Worn-out molds are encased in the foundations of buildings to prevent their falling into competitors' hands. According to the Lego Group, about eighteen bricks out of every million fail to meet the standard required.

That said, LEGO has got be the bane of parents life. I found a huge LEGO set at a charity shop and we gave it to my son when he was much younger. All he wanted to do was to pour it on the ground and make a big mess. We used to spend a good deal of our day cleaning up. How come, with all that manufacturing know how they couldn't come up with an automatic tidying up system?

Now that he is older, he actually uses it quite constructively. He got a bunch of kits with all kinds of different vehicles. Last year he was more interested in Bionical LEGO. Much much more sophisticated than the LEGO I remember from my yoof.

Warning Geek Alert

An Australian has used half his annual leave to build a scale replica of the Sydney Harbour Bridge for an exhibit. 11,000 pieces of commercially available Lego was used to complete the project. Apparently this is the second attempt. The first was built in his house with $5,000 worth of Lego he purchased himself.