Lego Secret Vault Contains All Sets In History

An anonymous reader writes "Gizmodo has an exclusive video and feature of one of the most heavily guarded secrets in Lego: the security vault where they store all the Lego sets ever created, new in their boxes. 4,720 sets from 1953 to 2008. Really amazing stuff and a trip down memory lane to every person who has played with the magic bricks. All combined, the collection must be worth millions, not only because of the collector value, but also because Lego uses it as a safeguard in copyright and patent cases."

Comments

Storage

[Solokron]

I like how each of the storage isles are compressed against each other initially and can then be opened with a crank.

Re:Storage

[roguetrick]

http://www.ideals.uiuc.edu/bitstream/2142/6564/1/librarytrendsv19i3j_opt.pdf

IP

[bjackson1]

When I first read it, I assumed it was going to be a data store of all possible combinations of every Lego block ever created so that all possible designs were prior art and their property.

Lego needs to work on this.

Re:IP

[Anonymous Coward]

My first year teacher at mathematics (Soren Eilers at University of Copenhagen) has put a lot of work into the counting problem of combining six two-by-four Lego blocks. It's a huge problem to figure out how many ways you can combine six of those, and he describes how he with mathematics and programming methods approaches this problem at http://www.math.ku.dk/~eilers/lego.html.

Lego themselves computed in 1974 that the ways you can combine those six blocks is 102,981,500 - and that number has been referenced ever since in different media - and it's wrong.

Now, if you want to compute the total number of possibilities, bear in mind what Soren Eilers writes on his site:

the mathematics of the total number of combinations is so irregular that it is very difficult to come up with a formula for it. Thus one has to essentially go through all the possibilities. Based on our data, we estimate the total number of ways to combine 25 two-by-four LEGO bricks to be a 47 digit number.

With the current efficiency of our computer programs we further estimate that it would take us something like

130,881,177,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

years to compute the correct number. After some 5,000,000,000 years we will have to move our computer out of the Solar system, as the Sun is expected to become a red giant at about that time.

The space sets were the best

[pudding7]

Oh man, the Galaxy Explorer was the best! Seems like after the space sets, all the pieces started getting to specialized. Giant plates that could hardly be used to make anything other than what the instructions said.

I remember having dozens of little bins full of the hinge pieces, light bulb looking things, and space man helmets.

Good times.

Legos

[Dave Tucker Online]

That was fun to watch.

I never followed any of the Lego instructions, though. So while I owned many of those sets, I never built any of those things.

Was there anybody else who would just dump open the packages, mix it in with all your other pieces, and build random crap...like flying boats that deploy ninjas?

My favorite Lego kit....

[joeytmann]

By far, the Auto Chassis. Rack and pinion steering, v-4 motor with moving pistons, 3-speed gear box, fully independent front and rear suspension, oh and adjustable seats. Was an awesome kit to put together.

Lego Colorado

[smellsofbikes]

When I was a kid, LEGO decided to license out their manufacture to a Samsonite factory in Loveland, Colorado (right next door to the Hewlett Packard facility that was the first place HP had outsourced from its birth in Silicon Valley, as it happens.) The factory also made luggage and kids' bikes. It was cool because up until 2006 it still looked like it had been made of LEGO bricks: the windows were 2x4 clear bricks on-end, 12 feet high. They made all sorts of weird LEGO stuff, and I wonder sometimes if it was all official -- the injection molding dies came straight from Denmark, and were very, very carefully accounted for, but the plant also built other unusual LEGO sets like big crude-looking gears that only sort of meshed with the standard LEGO bricks.
My childhood was filled with disappointment because no matter how many LEGO kits I managed to get, some of my friends, whose parents worked at the plant, had trash-bags full of floor sweepings and could make playhouses we could crawl into with their bricks. (Including a lot of weird off-colors and bricks that weren't shaped quite right.) The local library had, and probably still has, several LEGO buildings the size of cars, beautifully designed and put together. I was upset that they were glued together, making all those parts worthless. Okay, I'm still upset by that.
Anyway. I've just always wondered if the rumors were true and the little Colorado plant did create some graymarket LEGO kits that Billund doesn't have. LEGO yanked their license after only a few years because they were doing a poor job, but maybe, just maybe, I have a couple LEGO pieces that aren't represented in that vault in Billund.

Re:cool tour, but no real surprise

[sm62704]

I'm wondering what Lego holds patents on? Also, what patents they once held that have expired? I remember Legos from when I was a kid, and I'm over 50. The design patent on the original blocks has to have expired long ago.

Building instructions from 1958 to 2007

[Anonymous Coward]

Building instructions from 1958 to 2007 on this site:
http://www.hccamsterdam.nl/brickfactory/year/index.htm

Thank you

[wandazulu]

Mr Slacker, you have made me unbelievably happy. The first one was it, as soon as I saw it, I remembered the whole thing, standing there, being given this by my folks. For a split second, I was 4 years old and it was like the happiest moment of my life, again.

Thank you Thank you Thank you.

Re:Okay, this calls for a heist.

[Myrddin Wyllt]

If you've never seen it, check out The Lego Italian Job, part 1 and part 2, which were the first two YouTube vids I ever watched.

Awesome.

Re:You would think that but this is not the rule..

[Sir Nimrod]

These aren't toys any longer; they are artifacts. If you're serious about keeping your artifacts around, you need to remember this.

I volunteer at the Computer History Museum, and they're very particular about this. Wearing white cotton gloves as you pick up an old Atari joystick may seem silly, but that's the rule. There's very little information about how long plastics will last, so keep your grubby little fingers off.