Tuesday Trivia

Games and toys. What would we do without them? I something look at one and wonder how it was created. What kind of strange mind comes up with them? And the most simple, of course, makes me say, "Why didn't I think of that?" But I don't, so it is interesting to hear about those who do!

LEGOS

LEGO creater Ole Kirk Christiansen's company originally sold and made wooden stepladders and ironing boards. In 1932, he started making wooden toys that were so popular he decided to sell them exclusively. The name LEGO means "play well" in Danish.

In 1949, LEGO acquired the design rights to a self-locking building block created by Kiddicraft in the U.K. Originally named Automatic Binding Bricks, there was a name change in 1953 to LEGO Bricks and the name LEGO is imprinted on all the bricks.

In the 1950s LEGO grew to include building sets, vehicles and assorted props to help create buildings and towns. A new patent in 1958 made the brick sturdier and flexible with a tube on the bottom of the LEGO brick.

Lego pieces of all varieties are a part of a universal system. Lego bricks from 1958 still interlock with those made in 2009, and Lego sets for young children are compatible with those made for teenagers.

The Lego Group's motto is "Only the best is good enough", a free translation of the Danish phrase Kun det bedste er godt nok. This motto was created by Ole Kirk to encourage his employees never to skimp on quality, a value he believed in strongly. The motto is still used within the company today.

Four billion LEGO mini-figures have been made since 1978. Four hundred billion bricks have been produced since 1958.

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"Whatever good things we build end up building us."

Jim Rohn, (1930-), American entrepreneur, author, and
motivational speaker.

CRAYOLAS

The first Crayola crayons were produced by cousins Edwin Binney and C. Harold Smith in 1903. The pair made the crayons from paraffin wax and colored pigments, in a pack of just eight simple colors: red, blue, yellow, green, violet, orange, black and brown.

Since then, the company has produced over a 100 billion crayons. In 2007, the subsidiary of Hallmark Cards became "Crayola LLC". Crayola has its headquarters in Forks Township, Pennsylvania.

The name "Crayola" was created by Alice Stead Binney, a former school teacher. She put together the French word "craie", which means "chalk", and "ola," from "oleaginous", which means "oily", and came up with "Crayola".

Crayola makes 120 colors of crayons today. There are 19 shades of blue, 20 types of green, 23 shades of red, 8 different yellows, 16 types of purples, 14 shades of oranges, 11 browns, 2 grays, 1 silver, 1 white, 2 black shades, 1 gold and 2 types of copper.

Back in 2000, Crayola developed an online poll to find out what crayon color was America's favorite, and the result was blue.

According to a Yale University study of American adults, the smell of Crayola crayons is ranked number 18 when it comes to the 20 most recognizable smells.

GAME TECHNOLOGY

The Sega Dreamcast was the first console to implement online play over a phone line, calling the system Sega Net. Popular Science recognized the Sega Dreamcast as one of the most important and innovative products of 1999.

The PlayStation 2 was the first system to have graphics capability better than that of the leading-edge personal computer at the time of its release.

The Nintendo N64 marked the first time that computer graphics workstation manufacturer Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI) developed game hardware technology.

The first console to have games available in the form of add-on cartridges was the Fairchild Channel F console, introduced in August 1976.

The word atari comes from the ancient Japanese game of Go and means "you are about to be engulfed." Technically, it is the word used by a player to inform his opponent that he or she is about to lose, similar to "check" in chess.

The Sega Genesis featured a version of the same Motorola processor that powered the original Apple Macintosh computer.

There you have it!

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