Improving the educational value of childhood play was Ole Kirk Christiansen’s goal when he applied the LEGO name in 1934 to his line of wooden toys. The Danish carpenter created the now-famous word by combining the first two letters of “leg godt,” which means “play well” in his native language.
In the 1940s, Christiansen realized that new forms of synthetic materials would make children’s toys more durable and also safer because they required no paint and could be washed after play. In 1949, his company introduced stackable blocks called Automatic Binding Bricks made from cellulose acetate – a hard compound derived from wood pulp and cotton fiber. Available in bright primary colors with a pattern of short studs on top, the bricks could form simple structures such as walls, but their bond was too weak for complex designs.
It wasn’t until 1958, with the addition of central, hollow tubes to the underside of each block, that the bricks could be linked together in strong chains. With that simple modification, the LEGO System of Play made its world debut.
Within the next five years, the LEGO Group changed its brick recipe to acrylonitrile butadiene styrene – a thermoplastic more commonly known as “ABS.” This permanent switch was necessary because ABS is a polymer capable of retaining the LEGO brick’s trademark brilliant color and stiffness. It allowed the use of injection-molding techniques accurate to within two-thousandths of a millimeter. This early attention to product detail means that bricks produced at any time during the last half-century are compatible with any other part of the LEGO universal system.
Not since the invention of the atom and the DNA molecule has such a simple building block generated so much variety. Computer calculations tell us there are more than 915 million different ways to combine six eight-stud LEGO bricks, and that does not take into account the 52 colors or 2,350 other LEGO elements such as sloping roof tiles (introduced in 1958), wheels (1962), powered trains (1966), human-like figures (1974) and wind-up engines (1982).
The LEGO system’s success funded the first LEGOLAND® theme park in 1968 in Christiansen’s hometown of Billund, Denmark, where 50 million bricks now make up seven themed environments displaying cowboys, pirates, knights and other characters from childhood imagination. The company has since opened similar attractions in England, the U.S. and Germany.
No toy has enjoyed the phenomenal popularity of the simple LEGO brick and its related parts. More than 440 billion LEGO elements have been manufactured since the company introduced the line; that’s an average of 62 LEGO pieces for every man, woman and child on the planet. LEGO products are sold in 130 countries at the rate of seven sets per second. Marketing surveys indicate the world’s children – and many adults – spend five billion hours each year playing with the snap-together toys. LEGO Club claims a membership of 2.7 million. For these reasons and many more, at the dawn of the new millennium, Fortune magazine and the British Association of Toy Retailers declared the LEGO system to be the “Toy of the Century.”
Two professional LEGO builders, on loan from the LEGO Store at Concord Mills Mall, will offer lessons and guidance to aspiring auto designers and racers during all four days of the Sept. 10-13 Food Lion AutoFair at Lowe’s Motor Speedway. Sessions will be held at the Time Warner Media Center in the infield.
The Fall Food Lion AutoFair annually attracts more than 120,000 visitors to Lowe’s Motor Speedway. It features more than 50 car club displays and more than 7,000 vendor spaces that offer a huge array of automotive parts and memorabilia.
More than 2,000 collectible vehicles of all makes and models will be available for sale in the car corral that rings the 1.5-mile superspeedway.
Food Lion AutoFair hours are 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., Thursday through Saturday, and 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., on Sunday. Tickets are $10 for adults. Tickets are $10 for adults while children 12 and under are admitted free when accompanied by an adult. On Friday, Sept. 11, in honor of their public service, all police, fire and emergency workers showing a badge or ID will have free admission to the Food Lion AutoFair.
Parking for the event is $5.
For more information, contact the Lowe’s Motor Speedway events department at (704) 455-3205 or visit www.lowesmotorspeedway.com.
