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  Course: Systems & Structures
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Introduction to LEGO® Bricks Find out what makes bricks stick! The first LEGO bricks were born in Denmark over 50 years ago. Find out what makes them stick, and learn how to call your bricks by name.  
So you want to be a LEGO Master Builder? You want to " click bricks" with the best of them? Well you've come to the right place! Completing these LEGO Design School lessons will be a great first step!
Birth of the Brick Let's get started at the beginning with the very first LEGO brick. It was sold in 1949, and was called an Automatic Binding Brick. Like the modern LEGO bricks in your collection, this brick had studs which could be used to connect the top of one brick to the bottom of another. However, because the Automatic Binding Brick was hollow, constructions made with these bricks were a little unstable. This inspired the inventor of the LEGO brick, Godtfred Kirk Kristiansen, to spend night and day trying to figure out how to give LEGO bricks more grip power. Eventually he came up with a brilliant idea -- tubes! The newly redesigned LEGO brick was born and introduced to the toy market in 1958. Since then, more than 2500 different LEGO elements have been designed, and over 327 billion LEGO elements have been produced by our factories! Brick Building Basics But how exactly do LEGO bricks work? What makes them "stick together?" The answer is a unique way of connecting called a stud-and-tube coupling system. This special linking process utilizes two principal factors to create a secure bond between LEGO bricks: interference fit and friction. In engineering terms, interference fit interlocks the LEGO elements when you squish them together. The parts of a LEGO element that are involved in this interference fit are called walls, tubes and studs.
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