Book contents
- Our Long Walk to Economic Freedom
- Our Long Walk to Economic Freedom
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- A Note on Sources and Terminology
- How Do We Thrive?
- 1 Who Are the Architects of Wakanda?
- 2 What Happened at Blombos in 70,000 BCE?
- 3 Why Are the Danes So Individualistic?
- 4 Why Does isiXhosa Have Clicks?
- 5 How Did Joseph and His Eleven Brothers Solve the Three Economic Problems?
- 6 What Do Charlemagne and King Zwelithini Have in Common?
- 7 Why Do Indians Have Dowry and Africans Lobola?
- 8 Who Was the Richest Man Ever to Live?
- 9 How Did 168 Spanish Conquistadores Capture an Empire?
- 10 Why Was a Giraffe the Perfect Gift for the Chinese Emperor?
- 11 Who Visited Gorée Island on 27 June 2013?
- 12 What Is an Incunabulum?
- 13 Who Was Autshumao’s Niece?
- 14 What Did Thomson, Watson & Co. Purchase?
- 15 What Do an Indonesian Volcano, Frankenstein and Shaka Zulu Have in Common?
- 16 Why Was the Spinning Jenny Not Invented in India?
- 17 Why Did Railways Hurt Basotho Farmers?
- 18 What Did Sol Plaatje Find on His Journey through South Africa?
- 19 Why Can You Have Any Car as Long as It Is Black?
- 20 What Does a Butterfly Collector Do in the Congo?
- 21 Who Wrote the Best Closing Line of Modern Literature?
- 22 How Could a Movie Embarrass Stalin?
- 23 Who Is the Perfect Soldier?
- 24 What Was the Great Leap Forward?
- 25 Why Should We Cry for Argentina?
- 26 Who Was the Last King of Scotland?
- 27 How Did Einstein Help Create Eskom?
- 28 Why Would You Want to Eat Sushi in the Transkei?
- 29 Why Do the Japanese Play Rugby?
- 30 What Do Lego and the Greatest Invention of the Twentieth Century Have in Common?
- 31 What Is Funny about Moore’s Law?
- 32 What Bubbles in Iceland?
- 33 What Did The Economist Get Spectacularly Wrong?
- 34 Will Madiba’s Long Walk to Freedom Ever End?
- 35 What Should No Scholar Ever Do?
- Epilogue
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
30 - What Do Lego and the Greatest Invention of the Twentieth Century Have in Common?
The Second Era of Globalisation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 August 2022
- Our Long Walk to Economic Freedom
- Our Long Walk to Economic Freedom
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- A Note on Sources and Terminology
- How Do We Thrive?
- 1 Who Are the Architects of Wakanda?
- 2 What Happened at Blombos in 70,000 BCE?
- 3 Why Are the Danes So Individualistic?
- 4 Why Does isiXhosa Have Clicks?
- 5 How Did Joseph and His Eleven Brothers Solve the Three Economic Problems?
- 6 What Do Charlemagne and King Zwelithini Have in Common?
- 7 Why Do Indians Have Dowry and Africans Lobola?
- 8 Who Was the Richest Man Ever to Live?
- 9 How Did 168 Spanish Conquistadores Capture an Empire?
- 10 Why Was a Giraffe the Perfect Gift for the Chinese Emperor?
- 11 Who Visited Gorée Island on 27 June 2013?
- 12 What Is an Incunabulum?
- 13 Who Was Autshumao’s Niece?
- 14 What Did Thomson, Watson & Co. Purchase?
- 15 What Do an Indonesian Volcano, Frankenstein and Shaka Zulu Have in Common?
- 16 Why Was the Spinning Jenny Not Invented in India?
- 17 Why Did Railways Hurt Basotho Farmers?
- 18 What Did Sol Plaatje Find on His Journey through South Africa?
- 19 Why Can You Have Any Car as Long as It Is Black?
- 20 What Does a Butterfly Collector Do in the Congo?
- 21 Who Wrote the Best Closing Line of Modern Literature?
- 22 How Could a Movie Embarrass Stalin?
- 23 Who Is the Perfect Soldier?
- 24 What Was the Great Leap Forward?
- 25 Why Should We Cry for Argentina?
- 26 Who Was the Last King of Scotland?
- 27 How Did Einstein Help Create Eskom?
- 28 Why Would You Want to Eat Sushi in the Transkei?
- 29 Why Do the Japanese Play Rugby?
- 30 What Do Lego and the Greatest Invention of the Twentieth Century Have in Common?
- 31 What Is Funny about Moore’s Law?
- 32 What Bubbles in Iceland?
- 33 What Did The Economist Get Spectacularly Wrong?
- 34 Will Madiba’s Long Walk to Freedom Ever End?
- 35 What Should No Scholar Ever Do?
- Epilogue
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The main reason for the long-lasting popularity of Lego bricks is their versatility. A back-of-the-envelope calculation will reveal that six bricks of 2 x 4 studs can be combined in almost 1 billion ways. And because Lego bricks made today still interlock with those first made in 1958, the year the toy was first patented, the possibilities for creative play are, quite literally, innumerable.
Two years before the patent that would turn Lego into the world’s favourite toy company, a man called Malcom McLean made the same discovery as Ole Kirk Christiansen, the inventor of Lego. McLean was not in the business of making children’s toys, however, but of shipping goods. On 26 April 1956 he was watching his idea come to fruition: in Newark, New Jersey, a crane was lifting fifty-eight aluminium metal boxes into an old tanker ship.
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- Our Long Walk to Economic FreedomLessons from 100,000 Years of Human History, pp. 181 - 187Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022