A Little About LEGO and the LEGO Mindstorms Robot

For sure you have heard or played with Lego, one of the most famous toys in the word. What you may not know about is the history of this great company.

In 1916 Kirk Christiansen of Denmark, a carpenter, opened a woodworking shop. His wood shop mainly built furniture for people who lived in the area.

This was how Lego began, from the mind of a simple carpenter in the small country of Denmark. In 1932, business was not good enough for Kirk Christiansen so he expanded his product line from just furniture to ironing boards, stepladders, and wooden toys. As business grew, he renamed his company Lego from the Danish phrase “leg godt” which means to “play well”. Many years later, the Lego Group officially stated that the name Lego comes from the Latin word “Lego” which means “I assemble” or “I put together”.

Christiansen’s company continued to make wooden toys out of this same building until 1960 when its wooden toy warehouse was destroyed in a fire.

By 1954, Christiansen’s son Godtfred had worked hard and moved up in the company to the position of managing director. Godtfred had to travel to England to meet with a purchasing agent. While they sat on a ferry, they began an in depth discussion about the toy market in both Denmark and England and where the toy market was heading.

Little did anyone know at the time that this simple discussion would lead to the invention of perhaps the world’s greatest toy ever created, Lego snap together building blocks.

For over 30 years, the LEGO Company made only toys and related goods. Then in 1968, the company opened its first LEGOLAND – in its home city of Billund, Denmark.

In the 1980’s, once again, Lego pondered where the future of toys was headed. The invented an awesome product by combining computer chips with Lego building blocks. What if they could design a robot that could be built with snap together Legos and wired up so that the more you wanted the robot to do, the more computer chips you could snap together? After many years of secret work, they created the awesome Lego Mindstorms product line of snap together robots. These robots are no silly toy either. Even advanced educational institutions like MIT use the Lego Mindstorms in their courses. This robot can even be connected to a computer and be programmed.

Lego Mindstorms NXT is a programmable robotics kit that consists of over 500 Technic pieces, 3 servo motors, 4 sensors (ultrasonic, sound, touch, and light), 7 wires, a USB cable to connect your robot to your computer, and the NXT brick.

A full product line of snap on to your robot computer chips and devices exist such as cameras, sensors, gears, and motors.

Lego also holds the patents on what is called the stud-and-tube coupling system which makes models built with Legos much more stable. The only criticism I have heard of Lego is how once they dominate a particular niche in the toy market, they raise the prices up sky high and let the good Lego name pull them through. This has created somewhat of a love hate dichotomy between consumers of Legos in non-Denmark countries.

Regardless of LEGO’s policies, LEGO has a great line of toys, and the company has done a lot to entertain millions of kids around the world.

I hope you find this brief history of Lego toys interesting. For the best bargains you can compare on the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot go to lego mindstorms and for the largest selection of robots at prices you can compare from all the major retailers, visit buy robot