Text 19

Read the Lego story. What do these figures mean?

1999 62 20 billion 1934

_LEGO

_{F ounded 1932 Billund, Denmark}

I. The richest person in Denmark is Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen. How so? Because Kristiansen is the grandson of Ole Kirk Christiansen (1891-1958) and from 1979 to 2004 he was the chief executive officer of the unassuming business his grandfather founded in 1934. Its name was Lego, as in "leg godt" or "play well" in Danish.

II. As a business, Lego has played very well indeed. Today, the firm says it has produced enough of its famous interlocking plastic bricks for every human being alive to own 62 pieces each. Have a go at the maths if you like: this is an awful lot of plastic bricks.

III. Christiansen was a carpenter who first made wooden building blocks for children in 1932. He switched to plastic in 1949, modelling his latest design on Kiddicraft's Self-Locking Building Bricks first produced two years earlier by the British firm founded by Hilary Fisher Page. However, while Kiddicraft won the international Toy of the Year award in 1951, Lego went on to win the prestigious Toy of the Century award in 1999.

IV. Produced, since 1963, from a plastic known as ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene), Lego bricks, and later more sophisticated toys designed to complement the bricks, are made, no, not in China, but in Denmark still, as well as in the Czech Republic, Mexico and the United States. Some 20 billion Lego pieces were made last year, each of them able to interlock with any piece of Lego sold since 1963. This is, indeed, the genius of the essential Lego design. Every last piece connects, so that inventive children can create wonderfully daring or bonkers structures using any old, or new, bit of Lego they come across, inherit, buy or are given as presents.

V. The real trick with the fundamental design was to ensure that the bricks would connect firmly, but not so firmly that a toddler would find them difficult to disconnect. The "stud-and-tube" brick-coupling system was invented and patented in 1958. This new means of connecting the bricks offered greater stability for models and opened up unlimited building possibilities.

VI. While appealing to both genders and to a wide range of ages, Lego provides stimulating play that teaches children the fundamental principles of construction and, therefore, design.

1. Read the text and say whether the following statements are true, false or not mentioned in the text:

а) Ole Kirk Kristiansen is а founder of Lego.

b) He was the inventor of the principle of interlocking bricks.

c) Lego made only plastic bricks.

d) The number of bricks now exceeds the number of the world population.

e) Lego bricks are produced in China.

f) All Lego bricks can be interlocked.

g) It is difficult for а small child to play with Lego bricks.

h) Playing with Lego bricks you can study fundamentals of design.

2. Find the paragraph containing the following information:

а) The Lego business is very successful.

b) The “stud-and-tube” system was patented in 1958.

c) Kiddicraft was the first producer of the interlocking bricks.