Description
This article is from the Lego FAQ, by
Tom Pfeifer pfeifer@fokus.gmd.de with numerous contributions by
others.
12) LEGO history / What does LEGO mean
See also: Facts and Figures, listed below in the WWW section.
LEGO comes from Danish "leg godt".
The recent "20th anniversary" refers to the LEGO company in the US
(1973), not to LEGO itself. It was available before because Samsonite
had a license to produce it.
Andreas Henning (d2henan@dtek.chalmers.se) and Timo (tho@tik.vtt.fi)
say:
The LEGO patent of the original brick has expired some years ago.
Franz-Michael S. Mellbin comments
(fischer-mellbin@fischer-mellbin.com) comments:
Lego changed their strategy, so now they are taking out patents
(lots!) on their specific sets - including many sets, that are never
marketed.
nad@cl.cam.ac.uk Neil Dodgson found:
My "The Art of LEGO" book says that the company name, LEGO, came from
the Danish "Leg godt", roughly translated as "Play well". The company
originally made wooden toys during the depression. They also made
yo-yos for a while, during the yo-yo craze. Unfortunately this left
them with warehouses full of yo-yos when the craze suddenly stopped;
so the boss just cut all the yo-yos in half, and used them as wheels
for toy trucks, etc. The same guy invented the LEGO bricks, initially
without the tubes inside; the addition of these tubes meant that the
blocks held together really well, and sales took off. I think it was
in the mid to late '50s that LEGO decided to drop all its other
products and just make the bricks (risky...).
(Somebody found in a book that LEGO dropped their other product lines
when a fire burned down the building housing them. Thus, it was not as
risky to sell the bricks exclusively. It would probably have been
riskier to re-capitalize the wooden toy line than to drop it.)
Bo Kjellerup (kokdg@diku.dk):
The fire was caused by the son of the boss, Kirk Kristiansen, who was
playing in their garage/hobby room aside the factory and set it all on
fire.
BTW, the son's name was misspelled in the church's annuals, so he is
spelled with 'K' now.
"The Art of LEGO" says that one reason LEGO survives is that it
constantly adapts itself to the modern world; e.g. the original LEGO
trains, and now the remodeled one that will run off the mains. Perhaps
all these new special blocks are a reflection of a society that wants
instant gratification, rather than spending a few hours building a
model?
found by r1b6116@zeus.tamu.edu / Ken Blair:
Taken without permission from _Brick Kicks_ #1 ("The official magazine
of the LEGO builders club", USA) (circa 1987 or 88?)
"Bricks & Pieces: The LEGO Story"
Did you know that 300 million children have owned LEGO sets since they
were first made? And that you are one of the 68 million kids from
around the world who like to play with LEGO building bricks today!
Here's the story of how we grew...
Although the international LEGO Group is now very large, it is still a
family-run company that started out quite small. More than 50 years
ago, a carpenter named Ole Kirk Christiansen and his 12-year old son,
Godtfred, started making toys in the little town of Billund, Denmark.
Plastic had not been invented yet, so they made toy cars, trucks,
yo-yos, animals, and other toys out of wood. They decided that a good
name for their company would be LEGO, which means "play well" in
Danish, and also, they discovered, happens to mean "put together" in
Latin! Ole and Godtfred were very proud of their workmanship, and
adopted the LEGO motto that "only the best is good enough."
When plastic became available after World War II, LEGO began to make
both wooden and plastic toys. It was about this time that the idea of
plastic LEGO bricks was introduced. Godtfred loved to build with these
colorful new pieces, and was continually putting them together and
taking them apart to build new designs. In fact, it was Godtfred who
perfected the special design that makes every single LEGO brick fit
together in any combination, over and over again. The first LEGO
building set was made more than 30 years ago- and the bricks from that
set can still be used with even the newest LEGO building set of today!
LEGO bricks first appeared in the United States in 1961 and quickly
became as popular here as in Europe. The international LEGO group is
now worldwide, and is run by Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, Old Kirk
Christiansen's grandson. As the company keeps growing, so do the kids
of exciting LEGO kits that are now sold in 129 different countries ...
from DUPLO preschool to FABULAND, LEGO BASIC, to LEGOLAND, LEGO boats
and trains to LEGO TECHNIC SETS. In fact, this year alone, we will
make more than six billion bricks and building pieces for all the LEGO
lovers 'round the world- like you!
From _The_World_Of_LEGO_Toys_, by Henry Wiencek, Harry N. Abrams,
Inc., 1987,
quoted by dulcaoin@cats.ucsc.edu (joshua):
1949 was the revolutionary year for the company--it was in that year
that the company introduced something then called the "automatic
binding brick." For years Ole Kirk [found of LEGO] had been making
wooden blocks in the traditional European style--simple, handmade
cubes that could be stacked one on top of the other. When he began
producing plastic toys he copied the old wooden design in the new
material, but the plastic cubes didn't seem quite right..."It occured
to us that the bricks would become an even better toy...if they could
be 'locked' together." What emerged...was later to become the real
LEGO brick.
devaney@ACFcluster.NYU.EDU: Before LEGO was in the US market, the
luggage manufacturer Samsonite has had a manufacturing license, but
without much success in the toy market, so LEGO took the license back
and opened a shop in Connecticut.
From [Uhle, Mergret: Die LEGO Story. - Vienna: Ueberreuter, 1998]:
Company structure:
* all companies are hold 100% by the Christiansen family, at all 50
companies in 33 countries
* 4 Holding companies, 2 of them in Denmark, 2 in Switzerland, the
latter holding 22 companies, including such large as LEGO Italy
and LEGO USA,
* fabrication in Denmark, Switzerland, USA, Brazil, Korea, total of
360.000 square meters ,
Tools (moulds) produced in Germany and Switzerland,
micro motors in Hungary
* 97% of products sold outside Denmark to 137 markets
* per Dec 31, 1997: 9.500 full-time employees, 4.300 of them in
Denmark
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