Ole Kirk Christiansen

Ole Kirk Christiansen was born on April 7, 1891, in Filskov, southern Jutland, into a poor farming family. Qualifying as a master carpenter, he established a woodworking shop in Billund in 1916 building houses and furniture.

During the Great Depression when construction collapsed, Christiansen turned to crafting high-quality wooden toys, such as his famous wooden pull-along duck. In 1934, he coined the company name LEGO, derived from the Danish phrase leg godt ('play well'). In 1947, he took the bold risk of purchasing Denmark's first plastic injection-molding machine, producing the earliest interlocking plastic building bricks under the steadfast workshop motto: Det bedste er ikke for godt ('Only the best is good enough').