Lego All The Way
28th January 2008
Celebrating 50 Years of brick building plastic toy is still the favourite with millions of kids after half a century. It was voted the toy of the 20th century, it has hundreds of millions of fans, and it hurts when you step on it barefoot.

Lego is today celebrating its 50th anniversary with a year of events planned, including an attempt to build the world's tallest Lego tower in Windsor.

In 1958, Dane Godtfred Kirk Christiansen came up with the plastic interlocking brick which hasn't changed in 50 years. But it was his dad Ole who started the company in 1932, and two years later named the firm Lego by taking the first two letters of the Danish words Leg Godt, meaning "play well". What he didn't know was that in Latin, the word Lego roughly translates as "I put together." Now the company is the fifth biggest toy manufacturer in the world with annual sales of nearly £800million. So if you spent your childhood building everything from fire stations to space ships, here's your brick-by-brick guide to the classic toy.

The story so far

1932: Master carpenter Ole Kirk Christiansen establishes his business in the Danish village of Billund, making ladders, ironing boards, stools and wooden toys.

1947: Christiansen becomes the first person in Denmark to buy an injection moulding machine for toy production, and he starts making plastic bricks.

1958: Lego makes the breakthrough by launching the Lego brick in its present form. The key is the interlocking principle which offers unlimited building possibilities.

1961: The Lego wheel is invented allowing kids to build Lego cars.

1966: The first battery-driven Lego train is produced, complete with rails and a motor.

1967:Lego Duplo hits the shelves, aimed at toddlers.

1974: The first of the Lego family figures are produced, although they're much bigger than the ones we know now and were made completely of bricks.

1977: Lego Technic is born. Aimed at older kids, the more complicated system allows for the construction of working models.

1978: The Lego mini figure as we know it now is created. The figures are scaled down from previous models and given movable arms and legs.

1979: The first Lego space set is launched, complete with Lego astronauts.

1989: The successful Lego Pirate line of products is launched.

1998: Lego Mindstorms is launched, offering computerised Lego robots which can be programmed to perform different operations.

1999: The new Star Wars range hits the shelves on the back of George Lucas's new films.

2001: The Lego Bionicle range is launched, featuring an original set of characters complete with their own storyline based on Polynesian mythology.

2004: The company decides to return to its core business by focusing on products using the classic Lego brick.

2008: Lego marks its 50th anniversary.

How the bricks are made
The Lego brick is made from plastic. During the moulding process, the plastic is heated to 232°C until its consistency is similar to dough. It's then injected into the moulds at apressure of between 25 and 150 tons. It takes several seconds to cool and eject the new elements.

The moulds used in production are accurate to within two thousandths of a millimetre, and the accuracy of the moulding process means only 18 elements in every million produced fail to meet the company's quality standards. All Lego elements are fully compatible, regardless of when they were made over the last 50 years or in which factory.

Building up the facts
More than 400 million children and adults will play with Lego bricks this year. It would take 40 billion Lego bricks to reach the moon. There are 62 Lego bricks for every person on the planet. If all the Lego sets sold in a year were stacked together, they would fill a football pitch to a height of 77.8m. Children spend five billion hours a year playing with Lego bricks. There are 915,103,765 different ways of combining six eight-stud bricks of the same colour. Seven Lego sets are sold every second. Lego is sold in more than 130 countries. There are four Legolands around the world. The original is in Billund, Denmark, while the others are in Windsor, Germany and California. More than two million Lego bricks are manufactured every hour of every day. The world's tallest Lego tower was built in Toronto, Canada last year. It used almost half a million bricks and reached a height of 95ft. The number of Lego bricks sold in a year would reach more than five times around the world. The eight robots and 15 automatic cranes that work in the Lego warehouse in Billund can shift 660 crates of bricks in and out every hour. Lego is the world's largest tyre manufacturer, turning out 306million miniature tyres a year for its miniature vehicles. The world's largest Lego Christmas tree was the 30ft of green plastic displayed in Oberhausen, Germany in 2003. It used 250,000 bricks and took 1800 hours to build. 2.4 million people across the world are members of the Lego Club. The world's largest Lego statue is the 25ft tall Sitting Bull in the company's HQ in Billund, Denmark, and contains 1.5 million bricks.

Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond credits Lego with helping him recover from his brain injuries following his jet car crash in 2006. He said: "It's really good therapy." The Lego company is still a family-owned business, having netted its owners £3billion so far. 'Lego's annual sales are nearly £800m'