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LEGO is a line of construction toys manufactured by the Danish company Lego Group.  LEGOs are colorful interlocking plastic bricks and an accompanying array of gears, miniature figures and various other parts.  LEGO bricks can be assembled and connected into an infinite number of shapes to construct vehicles, buildings and even working machines.  The objects can then be disassembled, and the pieces reused to make other objects. 

The Lego Group began in the workshop of Ole Kirk Christiansen, a carpenter from Billund, Denmark, who began making wooden toys in 1932.  It expanded to plastic toys in 1940.  In 1949, Lego began producing the now famous interlocking bricks, calling them “Automatic Binding Bricks.”  Today LEGOs have international appeal, with an extensive subculture that supports LEGO movies, games, competitions, and four LEGO-themed amusement parks.

Below are some amazing examples of how these simple plastic LEGO blocks can be assembled to produce working high-tech computer equipment.

LEGO Difference Engine

Considered one of the first computers in history, the “Difference Engine” was an automatic, mechanical calculator designed to tabulate polynomial functions.  Both logarithmic and trigonometric functions can be approximated by polynomials, so a difference engine can compute many useful sets of numbers.

In 1822, Charles Babbage first proposed the use of such a machine.  The machine used the decimal number system and was powered by cranking a handle.  The British government initially financed the project, but withdrew funding when Babbage repeatedly asked for more funds while showing little progress.  Babbage was never able to get his design working, but based on Babbage’s original plans, the London Science Museum constructed a working Difference Engine in 1991 to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Babbage’s birth.

LEGO builder Andy Carol created a working Difference Engine in LEGOs, though his machine is “limited” to solving second- and third-order polynomials to three or four digits, which is still pretty amazing.
 

LEGO Bluetooth Printer

XFrame 3D Design used the popular Lego Mindstorms NXT kit to create a Bluetooth printer.  It uses typical LEGO colored bricks, pulleys and gears to create a fairly accurate printout.  Unlike conventional printers that remain fixed while moving paper through them, this LEGO printer rolls on wheels across the table to draw on paper that has been taped down.

You can see this printer in action:

LEGO Milk Scanner

This Milkscanner project is based on the idea that you can capture the silhouette of an object when it is surrounded by a high-contrast fluid, such as milk or ink.  When you lower the object into the fluid, the silhouette changes gradually as the fluid obstructs more of the object’s shape.  By capturing the object’s silhouette at different stages of immersion into the liquid, you can generate cross-sectional slices that can be stacked together and interpreted as 3D data.

The LEGOs hold a webcam that looks down on a plastic box that will hold the object to be scanned and then be filled with milk.  The first version was developed using C# and Microsoft Visual Studio Express, but the developer switched to CodeBlocks and C++, using OpenFrameworks as a base for the recording tool.  The software is open-source licensed under GPL and plays with MoviesAndBox 2.0.

LEGO Personal Computer

Some people love to build their own PCs, but that usually means buying a pre-built PC case.  But how about building the case yourself out of hundreds of colorful LEGOs?

Look here for detailed instructions on how to build “Winston’s Lego Computer.”  You will need a motherboard Mini-ITX, standard PC components, and a lot of LEGOs (apparently $380 worth of the colored bricks, according to the author).

But there’s more.  PC Magazine contacted professional LEGO sculptor Nathan Sawaya to build a LEGO PC for the cover of its magazine.  They liked the non-working model so much they decided to build a working version and give it away in a contest. 

So Sawaya and PC Magazine’s Executive Editor Jeremy Kaplan “spent countless hours installing the internal mechanics of the machine.  Using several different LEGO building techniques, we were able to mount the computer parts inside and actually make a working computer.”

Sawaya said the best part was the contest winner waited almost two weeks before putting it up on eBay.
 

LEGO iPhone

The aforementioned Nathan Sawaya also constructed the world’s first LEGO iPhone.  According to his website:

“It is just about actual size.  The service is spotty.  And before you ask, yes, it costs $399.”

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