the loss of his factory and his entire stock and blueprints. The impact of experiencing so many setbacks almost influenced Kristiansen to give up his business. However, he decided to start again, due to a sense of responsibility towards his workforce. In 1944, his new factory now incorporated an assembly line. At the end of World War II, many traditional materials used in the manufacture of products were not readily available, so manufacturers looked for other cheap, plastic alternatives. In 1947, the Lego company was the first toy manufacturer in Denmark to purchase a plastic injection moulding machine, which was so expensive that it cost more than twice the previous year's profits. This move to producing plastic toys was particularly challenging for Kristiansen, who had spent his life working with wood. By 1949, the business was producing a plastic product called the Automatic Binding Brick. In 1950, Kristiansen's son Godtfred was named junior managing director and the company spent the next decade focusing on the development of the plastic brick, which was modified from a self-locking building brick invented by Hilary Fisher Page. Despite poor sales in the early 1950s, the company persevered in developing its plastic brick by eventually using acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), thereby achieving the necessary "clutch power" or friction that holds two bricks together. This design for the Lego brick was patented in Copenhagen on 28 January 1958. Death On 11 March 1958, Kristiansen experienced a cardiac arrest and died at the age of 66, and his third son Godtfred promptly took over the company until his death in 1995. Ole died just before his son used the Automatic Binding Brick as the basis for the company's "System of Play", which was the foundation of the modern Lego construction toy. References Toy inventors 20th-century Danish businesspeople 20th-century Danish inventors Danish designers People from Billund Municipality Lego people 1891 births 1958 deaths