Ole Kirk Christiansen, 1898-1958
Christiansen was born in Filskov, a small village in central Jutland. As a young man, he trained as a carpenter and joiner and went on to ply his trade in the construction industry of neighboring Billund.
When the depression hit Denmark, construction projects became more and more scarce. It was at this point that Christiansen began building and selling small wooden odds and ends - step ladders, ironing boards, and yes, wooden toys.
By 1934, Christiansen's new company had grown dramatically, with the focus shifting to wooden pull toys similar to the duck above. That same year, the company's name was changed to LEGO - a portmanteau of the Danish "leg godt" or play well. The story is as follows.
The story goes that Ole held a contest among his employees for a new name with the winner receiving a bottle of homemade wine. He chose his own entry and apparently got to drink his own wine.
Unknown to Ole at the time, lego in latin roughly translates to "I study" or "I put together".
In 1947, Lego, Ole, and his son Godtfred purchased the first plastic injection molding machine in Denmark. On this machine they would produce their first set of interlocking plastic bricks. This first generation of bricks was copied from / inspired by a British invention.
By 1955, Godtfred came up with the the first in a line of Lego "System of Play" sets which focused around a single town / village scene. There's Godtfred in the police costume with his son Kjeld, daughter Gunhild, and their cousin Jorgen.
In 1958, Godtfred invented the modern Lego brick, the "tube and stud" design that we have all come to know and love.
This simple design change dramatically increased the number of combinations in which the bricks could be assembled. The image below is one of the first boxes for the new bricks and features Godtfred's children.
The snazzy bow-tie wearing boy on the right is Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, CEO of Lego from 1979-2004. In 2007 he was the richest man in Denmark, with an estimated net worth of $3.3B US.
Special thanks to the following sources:
- codex99, a graphic design blog, provided the first quote, many of the images, and much of the info for this post. It's a great blog.
- I snagged those excellent Lego "blueprints" from squidoo's great history of Lego
- Much of the other Ole stuff is from his wiki
- I also grabbed the Lego Nyhavn picture - at LegoLand in Billund - below from this excellent travel guide.
Again, I apologize for any factual errors. If there are any, please point me to them.
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