The beauty of LEGO

Last weekend I spent an afternoon with my 3-year-old niece Madison. When I arrived she was standing knee deep in a pile of LEGOs, one of my favorite classic designs. I asked her to show me what she made, and I got a fantastic surprise. She built a flower garden!

During my childhood I spent hours building everything from houses to skyscrapers, barns and restaurants. When I think LEGO, I think architecture—my imagination pretty much stops there. Not Madison’s. When she thinks LEGO, she thinks flowers, and much, much more. During her short time on Earth Madison’s gotten all kinds of creative with LEGO, building pirate ships, Batmobiles and even Battle Droids. That’s the beauty of LEGO—whatever you think, can be.

Madison’s girlie creativity got me wondering about the history of LEGOs. How long have these bad boys been around?

During 15 minutes of intense, laser-focused research, I learned that LEGO’s been around since the 30’s and that the basic brick hasn’t changed since 1958 (hooray for good design!); today LEGO employs around 150 designers and is one of the largest toy manufacturers in the world. I also learned that the LEGO’s MINDSTORMS line was the result of a collaboration between LEGO and MIT’s Media Lab, pretty neat.

Wanna learn how LEGO’s are made or how many LEGO bricks it’d take to build a LEGO tower that reaches the moon? Visit Howstuffworks.