Lego

. Marbles made in such a way are difficult to classify and generally grouped as "semi-machine-made". The number of contiguous configurations for one through seven blocks, counting reflections but not counting rotations is in this table:. Early mechanical methods were similar to modern ones, but used as assistance in manual production rather than automated mass production. Lego itself sells a line of sets named "Lego Studios," which contains a Lego web cam (repackaged Logitech USB Quickcam), software to record video on a computer, clear plastic rods which can be used to manipulate minifigures from off-camera, and a minifigure resembling Steven Spielberg. Colour can be added by dropping dyes onto the marbles while they are still liquid. Several webcomics are illustrated with Lego, notably Irregular Webcomic!. As the screws rotate, the marble travels along them, gradually being shaped into a sphere as it cools.

Director Michel Gondry filmed a live version of the video, digitized the result, and then recreated it entirely with Lego bricks. One mechanical technique is dropping globules of molten glass into a groove made by two interlocking parallel screws. Another notable example is the award-winning music video for the song "Fell in Love with a Girl" by the White Stripes. Glass marbles can be fashioned through the production of glass rods which are stacked together to form the desired pattern, cutting the rod into marble-sized pieces using marble scissors. [2]. Clay, pottery, ceramic, or porcelain marbles can be made by rolling the material into a ball, and then letting dry, or firing, and then can be left natural, painted, or glazed. 'Art Craziest Nation' was shown at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, UK. Stone or ivory marbles can be fashioned by grinding.

The Little Artists have created an entire Modern Art collection in a Lego Gallery. Marbles were originally made by hand. Artists have also used Lego sets with one of the more notorious examples being Polish artist Zbigniew Libera's "Lego Concentration Camp," a collection of mocked-up concentration camp-themed Lego sets.[1]. They can be categorized into three general types: hand-made, machine-made, and semi-machine made. For example, the Monty Python and the Holy Grail Special Edition DVD contained a version of the "Camelot" musical sequence redone with Lego minifigures and accessories. Marbles are made using many techniques. They usually use stop-motion animation. Additionally, many glass artisans produce marbles for the collectors' market only, with some selling for hundreds of dollars.

Such movies are called "Lego movies", "Brickfilms", or "cinema Lego". Due to a large market, there are many related side businesses that have sprung up such as numerous books and guides, web sites dedicated to live auctions of marbles only, and collector conventions. One hobby among enthusiasts is to re-create popular scenes from famous movies, using Lego bricks for the scenery and Lego play sets as characters. This trend is typical of toy collecting and has been seen with baseball cards, postage stamps, metal toys, and dolls. Another novel application of Lego bricks is the combination of bricks and electronic components to obtain a Lego Electronic Lab Kit. Thus, it may be predicted that the value of today's marbles will soon reach a peak, then decline as vast amounts of similar marbles enter the market (as the collectors' estates are broken up) and then slowly increase again over time. Because of the high degree of uniformity in Lego bricks, they have also been used in fields such as computer vision, in which knowing the exact dimensions and relative positions of objects is useful for creating test data. As with any collectible toy, the value seems to first peak when the collectors with the fondest memories enjoy recalling their childhoods through their acquisitions.

A set of software tools called LDraw or Lego Digital Designer can be used to model possible Lego creations in 3D. Very ugly but rare marbles may be valued as much as those of very fine quality. The website theory.org.uk (by academic David Gauntlett) features Lego versions of social theorists. Each of these ratings is used to calculate the marble's worth, with the final dollar value influenced by overall demand. Legowars, the generic term for a number of wargames (most notably Brikwars) involving Lego bricks enjoys a cult-like popularity. Every marble can be completely categorized by many factors including its condition, size, type, manufacturer/artisan, age, style, materials, scarcity, and the existence of original packaging (which is further rated in terms of condition). The site features over 2,000 photographs of Biblical scenes. As with any collecting hobby, the hyper-specialization that takes place can seem astounding to the uninformed.

For example, at The Brick Testament "The Reverend" Brendan Powell Smith has built the Bible in Lego pieces. Marble collecting is a hobby enjoyed by thousands of people around the world. Lego toys have been used in a number of unexpected ways. Glass marbles, too, became the most popular variety, and have remained so to this day. A group which calls itself "AFOLs" (for "Adult Fans of Lego") is an important demographic for The Lego Group, which has recently begun reintroducing popular sets from previous years to appeal to this group. Glass marbles entered mass production in the early 20th century, when WWI cut off the importation of glass marbles from Europe, causing American innovation to be applied to the task, producing a mechanized method of glass marble production which became the most common system in the world. Photos of many fan creations like these can be seen at Brickshelf and at MOCpages. Ceramic marbles entered actual mass production in the 1870s, the first truly cheap mass-production of marbles for the masses.

One such masterpiece solves a Rubik's Cube through the use of Lego motors and cameras, a task that many humans cannot accomplish. In 1846 a German glass blower invented "marble scissors", allowing the first large scale production of marbles. Large mosaics, fully functional padlocks and pendulum clocks, a harpsichord and an inkjet printer (built by Google co-founder Larry Page while at the University of Michigan) have been constructed from Lego pieces. They were commonly made of stone, metal, or glass until the 18th century, when ceramic marbles become more common. Some sculptures use hundreds of thousands of pieces and weigh tens of kilograms. They are mentioned prolifically in Roman literature, and examples exist of marbles previously in ancient Egypt. A cult following of people who have used Lego pieces to make sculptures, very large mosaics and complex machines has developed. Originally marbles were constructed from clay or marble, hence their name.

The Lego Group itself has developed a form of business consultancy fostering creative thinking, called Lego Serious Play, in which team members build metaphors of their organisational experiences using Lego bricks, and work through imaginary scenarios using the visual device of the Lego constructions and by exploring possibilities in a 'serious' form of 'play'. You can either have quitsies (able to quit) or no quitsies (unable to quit). Lego bricks today are used for purposes beyond children's play. Quitsies: A term decided before the game which will allow any opponent to stop the game without consequence. As of year end 2005, there are 25 LEGO Brand Retail stores in the USA, a number of stores in Europe, and a franchised LEGO store in Abu Dhabi. . There are also several Lego retail stores, including at Downtown Disney in both the Disneyland and Walt Disney World Resorts and in the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota. While adults rarely play marbles themselves, many engage in marble collecting, both for nostalgia and for the aesthetic appeal of the brightly colored little spheres, or art marbles which excell in art glass quality.

Lego Group operates several Legoland amusement parks in Europe and California. However, other players get a chance to hit the Gai taker's boulder and, if successful, then the marbels change ownership. It also allows advanced participants an opportunity to modify the Lego Mindstorms platform, adding their own sensors and actuators, as well as other mechanical, electrical, electronic and software related systems. But if a player can take the Gai out then he gets all the marbels. Lego Mindstorms provides primary and secondary school aged participants of RoboCup Junior an easy and intuitive introduction to robotics. It is not easy when there are marbels in the periphery. The international RoboCup Junior autonomous soccer competition involves extensive use of Lego Mindstorms equipment which is often pushed to its limits. The major move is to hit the central Gai marble and take it out of the rectangle.

A related competition is FIRST Lego League for elementary and middle schools. If they are hit but stays within the rectangle, then the player plays one more marble as a fine that is placed in the rectangle. The earliest, and likely the largest, is Botball, a national US middle- and high-school competition stemming from the MIT 6270 lego robotics tournament. The marbels hit bt the matris must go out of the rectangle. There are several competitions which use Lego bricks and the RCX, among other microcontrollers, for robotics. The players take turn to hit the marbles on the rectangle with a bigger marble (often called Boulder or Matris). These programmable bricks are sold under the name Lego Mindstorms. These marbels are placed on the periphery of a rectangle and one special marble (the Gai) is placed in the center.

There are even special bricks, like the LEGO RCX that can be programmed with a PC to perform very complicated and useful tasks. In Gaipar, each player contributes 4 marbles. There are also motors, gears, lights, sensors, and cameras available to be used with Lego components. It is immensely popular in Bengal. LEGO recently announced the procurement of worldwide toy rights with the cable TV channel Nickelodeon for building sets with themes from two hit TV shows such as SpongeBob SquarePants and Avatar: The Last Airbender which will be available Summer of 2006. One such specialized rule of game for Marble is named Gaipar. Sets containing new pieces are released frequently. As with many children's games, new rules are invented all the time, and each group is likely to have its own version of the game, often customised to the particular environment they play in.

Since it began producing plastic bricks, the Lego Group has released thousands of play sets themed around space, robots, pirates, vikings, medieval castles, dinosaurs, cities, suburbia, holiday locations, wild west, the Arctic, boats, racing cars, trains, Spider-Man, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Bionicle, and more. In this game, a useful strategy is to throw a marble such that it lands in a protected or difficult-to-reach location, should it miss. Annual production of Lego bricks averages approximately 20 billion (2 × 10¹⁰) per year, or about 600 pieces per second. A larger-scale game of marbles might involve taking turns to try and hit the opponent's marble to win. Brick decorations and packaging is done at plants in Denmark, Switzerland, United States, South Korea and the Czech Republic. Other versions consist of shooting marbles at other target marbles or holes in the ground. Moulding is done at one of two plants in Denmark and Switzerland. One version consists of drawing a circle in the sand with a stick, and adhering to informally agreed upon rules, players will take turns at knocking marbles out of the circle with their own marbles.

Manufacturing of Lego bricks occurs at a number of locations around the world. Some art glass marbles are even being made today in a huge size (greater than 12") for display purposes only. It is thanks to this care in manufacturing that the Lego Group has maintained such a high degree of quality over the decades; this is one of the main reasons that pieces manufactured over 40 years ago still interlock neatly with pieces manufactured today. Marbles is a class of children's games played with glass, clay, or agate orbs generally approximately half an inch (1cm) across, but can range from a very small size of less than 1/4 inch, to a very large size of over 3". According to the Lego Group, its moulding processes are so accurate that only 18 bricks out of every million fail to meet its stringent standards. Marbles named according to their colour. Worn-out moulds are encased in the foundations of buildings to prevent their falling into competitors' hands. Queenie? Any marble larger than the majority of the marbles in a given context may be termed a boulder.

Precision-machined, small-capacity moulds are used, and human inspectors meticulously check the output of the moulds, to eliminate significant variations in colour or thickness. Marbles named according to their size, e.g. Since 1963, Lego pieces are manufactured from a strong, resilient plastic known as acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, or ABS. A "marble" is the small hard sphere used for playing the game and for decoration and collection, usually made of glass, clay, stone, or plastic. In order for pieces to have just the right "clutch power", Lego elements are manufactured within a tolerance of 2 micrometres (0.00008 in). "Keepsies" (or "for keeps") is a variation of any game, where players win the marbles used in the game by their opponent. They cannot be too easy to pull apart, or the result will be Lego creations that are unstable; they cannot be too difficult to pull apart, since the disassembly of one creation in order to build another is part of the Lego appeal.

When snapped together, pieces must have just the right amount of "clutch power"; they must stay together until pulled apart. Bricks, beams, axles, minifigures, and all other elements in the Lego system are manufactured to an exacting degree of tolerance. Retail Lego sets for young children are compatible with those made for teenagers. Lego pieces from 1963 still interlock with pieces made in 2006, despite radical changes in shape and design over the years.

Since their introduction in 1949, Lego pieces of all varieties have been, first and foremost, part of a system. Nevertheless, such corporate admonitions are frequently ignored as corporate intervention in the use of language, and the word lego is commonly used not only as a noun to refer to Lego bricks but also as a generic term referring to any kind of interlocking toy brick. The company asserts that to protect its brand name, the word Lego must always be used as an adjective, as in "LEGO set," "LEGO products," "LEGO universe," and so forth. "Lego" is officially written in all uppercase letters.

Thank you! Susan Williams, Consumer Services. Please always refer to our bricks as 'LEGO Bricks or Toys' and not 'LEGOS.' By doing so, you will be helping to protect and preserve a brand of which we are very proud and that stands for quality the world over. We would sincerely like your help in keeping it special. The word LEGO® is a brand name and is very special to all of us in the LEGO Group Companies.

Lego catalogues in the 1970s and 1980s contained a note that read:. The Lego Group's name has become so synonymous with its flagship toy that many use the words "Lego" (collectively) or "Legos" to refer to the bricks themselves, and even to any plastic bricks resembling Lego bricks, although the Lego Group discourages this as dilution of their trademark. Over the years many more Lego sets, series, and pieces were created, with many innovative improvements and additions, culminating in the colourful versatile building toys that we know today. It wasn't until 1958 that the modern-day brick design was developed, and it took another five years to find exactly the right material for it.

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. It was his conversation with an overseas buyer that struck the idea of a toy system. By 1954, Christiansen's son, Godtfred, had become the junior managing director of the Lego Group. Many of the Lego Group's shipments were returned, following poor sales; it was thought that plastic toys could never replace wooden ones.

The use of plastic for toy manufacture was not highly regarded by retailers and consumers of the time. The blocks snapped together, but not so tightly that they couldn't be pulled apart. They had several round "studs" on top, and a hollow rectangular bottom. A few years later, in 1949, Lego began producing similar bricks, calling them "Automatic Binding Bricks." These bricks, manufactured from cellulose acetate, were developed in the spirit of traditional wooden blocks that could be stacked upon one another; however, these plastic bricks could be "locked" together.

Hilary Harry Fisher Page, a child psychologist. These "Kiddicraft Self-Locking Building Bricks" were designed and patented in the UK by Mr. In 1947, Ole Kirk and his son Godtfred obtained samples of interlocking plastic bricks produced by the company Kiddicraft. It should be noted, however, that the original, Greek verb "legein" actually has the meaning "put together".

The Lego Group claims that "Lego" means "I put together" or "I assemble" in Latin, though this is a rather liberal translation; the more accepted and widely used application of the word is "I read". The company name Lego was coined by Christiansen from the Danish phrase leg godt, meaning "play well". Ole Kirk started creating wooden toys in 1932, but it wasn't until 1949 that the famous plastic Lego brick was created. The Lego Group had humble beginnings in the workshop of Ole Kirk Christiansen, a poor carpenter from Billund, Denmark.

. The sets are produced by the Lego Group, a privately-held company based in Denmark. High production quality and careful attention to detail ensures that Lego pieces can fit together in myriad ways, which is one of the main reasons for the toy's success. Cars, planes, trains, buildings, castles, sculptures, ships, spaceships, and even working robots are just a few of the many things that can be made with Lego bricks.

Lego is a line of toys featuring colourful plastic bricks, gears, minifigures (also called minifigs or mini-figs), and other pieces which can be assembled to create models of almost anything imaginable. The number 102,981,504 (four more than that figure) is the number of six-piece towers (of a height of six). The figure of 102,981,500 is often given for six pieces, but it is incorrect. Six eight-stud Lego bricks of the same colour can be put together in 915,103,765 ways, and just three bricks of the same colour offer 1,560 combinations.

"Legot" (or "leegot"), plural form of "lego" (or "leego") is also used as a Finnish slang term for human teeth, because of the rectangular shape of the teeth.