50 Years of Lego!

from gizmodo.com
"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.

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."

I remember as a kid having a big wooden box that my grandfather built, filled entirely with Legos. Whenever we decided to play with them, my brother and I would dump the entire box onto the floor and then quickly struggle to find the wings from the spaceship set.

All we really built were spaceships, because as any kid knows, a wingless spaceship is entirely useless. (This was before I understood that space is a vacuum. So George Lucas was completely wrong and Darren Aronofsky completely correct.)


(Maybe, George... Probably not. There's really nothing futuristic about war.)


(Definitely, Darren. Peace, now that's futuristic.)

Sorry to digress. (I just looooooooved The Fountain.)

Happy 50th birthday, Lego!