The "All Work And No Play Make....." Story

It was an ordinary day.  Doing some more cleaning around the house, trying to find items that we no longer need or use that we can sell or give away so when we make a move into a retirement community we have less to take with us.  In our third bedroom we have both a rather large closet filled with old toys as well as a few chests also filled with toys from the past.  The other day I had the best time looking at all the building blocks that our family had accumulated since my childhood.  Boxes of Lincoln Logs, Tinkertoys and small American red plastic bricks that were the predecessor of today' Lego sets.  My parents bought me a large set of Lincoln Logs when I was a young child.

They consisted of square-notched miniature wooden logs that I used to build small forts and buildings.  They were invented in 1916 by John Lloyd Wright who was the second son of the well-known architect Frank Lloyd Wright.  The corners interlocked and when used provided a rather sturdy platform for building.  They were named for the eponymous sixteenth President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln who happened to live at one time in a log cabin.  They were made with real wood and each set had over 150 pieces to it which included maple-stained round logs that you could interlock in the corners as well as green wooden slats that were used for roofing material.  Lincoln Logs were inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 1999.  My Tinkertoy set was designed in 1914 by Charles H. Pajeau, who formed the Tinker Toy Company in Evanston, Illinois.  Mr. Pajeau was a stonemason who designed the toy sets after seeing children play with sticks and empty spools of thread.

The set was meant to inspire children to use their imagination while building.  Over a million sets were initially sold.  Then in the 1950s I began playing with American Plastic Bricks which were naturally red in color.  

They were made of plastic and were interlocking.  I can remember having more than one set since they did break from time to time and you couldn't build entire village of houses with just one set.  I do remember building small houses to display on my Lionel Train layout my dad set up for me in the basement at 929 North Queen Street in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  I no longer have any of the plastic bricks that I remember from the past, but still have a few Lincoln Logs as well as Tinkertoys.  Then along came a Danish genius named Ole Kirk Christiansen who invented the interlocking plastic pieces that we know today as LEGO bricks.  

The early LEGO blocks

He was a master joiner and carpenter who opened a small woodworking shop with is son Godtfred who was just 12 years old at the time.  They manufactured stepladders, ironing boards and eventually wooden toys.  In 1934 they dubbed their business LEGO, a contraction of the Danish "leg got" ("play well").  The company expanded from 6 employees in 1934 to 40 in 1942.  The company was the first Danish company to own a plastic injection-molding machine.  They saw a British toy that was based on plastic blocks in 1947 and with a few changes came up with a toy two years later that were blocks with pegs on top and hollow bottoms which allowed children to lock the bricks together and create elaborate structures.  They called their blocks "Automatic Binding Bricks" that were the forerunner of today's LEGO bricks.  The one thing they didn't have was the small tubes that are found in today's LEGO blocks.  In 1958 the LEGO brick finally came into its own.  It was Godtfred Christiansen who pioneered and patented the now-standard LEGO stud-and-tube configuration, and introduced roof bricks to the "LEGO System of Play."  LEGO hasn't changed their design since when they began making them in 1958.  Then in 1961 the LEGO wheel was invented and today makes about 300 million wheels per year.  They now package about 37,000 LEGO sets per hour.   Their standards are so precise that they only find about 18 defective bricks out of every million bricks they make every day.  In 2009 a British TV presenter by the name of James May built a life size house out of LEGO.  

James May's house made of LEGO.

He used 3.3 million bricks and it included a working toilet, shower and a bed which is said to be very comfortable.  And if you're wondering...the plural of LEGO is LEGO.  The building blocks of today are so much different than they were when I was a child playing with my Lincoln Logs.  But isn't everything today so much different than they were 70 plus years ago?  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy,