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For sure you have heard or played with Lego, one of the most famous toys in the word. What you may not know about is the history of this great company.
In 1916 Kirk Christiansen of Denmark, a carpenter, opened a woodworking shop. His wood shop mainly built furniture for people who lived in the area.
This was how Lego began, from the mind of a simple carpenter in the small country of Denmark. In 1932, business was not good enough for Kirk Christiansen so he expanded his product line from just furniture to ironing boards, stepladders, and wooden toys. As business grew, he renamed his company Lego from the Danish phrase “leg godt” which means to “play well”. Many years later, the Lego Group officially stated that the name Lego comes from the Latin word “Lego” which means “I assemble” or “I put together”.
Christiansen’s company continued to make wooden toys out of this same building until 1960 when its wooden toy warehouse was destroyed in a fire.
By 1954, Christiansen’s son Godtfred had worked hard and moved up in the company to the position of managing director. Godtfred had to travel to England to meet with a purchasing agent. While they sat on a ferry, they began an in depth discussion about the toy market in both Denmark and England and where the toy market was heading.
Little did anyone know at the time that this simple discussion would lead to the invention of perhaps the world’s greatest toy ever created, Lego snap together building blocks.
For over 30 years, the LEGO Company made only toys and related goods. Then in 1968, the company opened its first LEGOLAND – in its home city of Billund, Denmark.
In the 1980’s, once again, Lego pondered where the future of toys was headed. The invented an awesome product by combining computer chips with Lego building blocks. What if they could design a robot that could be built with snap together Legos and wired up so that the more you wanted the robot to do, the more computer chips you could snap together? After many years of secret work, they created the awesome Lego Mindstorms product line of snap together robots. These robots are no silly toy either. Even advanced educational institutions like MIT use the Lego Mindstorms in their courses. This robot can even be connected to a computer and be programmed.
Lego Mindstorms NXT is a programmable robotics kit that consists of over 500 Technic pieces, 3 servo motors, 4 sensors (ultrasonic, sound, touch, and light), 7 wires, a USB cable to connect your robot to your computer, and the NXT brick.
A full product line of snap on to your robot computer chips and devices exist such as cameras, sensors, gears, and motors.
Lego also holds the patents on what is called the stud-and-tube coupling system which makes models built with Legos much more stable. The only criticism I have heard of Lego is how once they dominate a particular niche in the toy market, they raise the prices up sky high and let the good Lego name pull them through. This has created somewhat of a love hate dichotomy between consumers of Legos in non-Denmark countries.
Regardless of LEGO’s policies, LEGO has a great line of toys, and the company has done a lot to entertain millions of kids around the world.
I hope you find this brief history of Lego toys interesting. For the best bargains you can compare on the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot go to lego mindstorms and for the largest selection of robots at prices you can compare from all the major retailers, visit buy robot
Wind power generation can now be done from home. With the exponential population growth curve, our current level of sustainability without causing serious harm to the planet is no longer possible. This is why the time for wind power and solar power is now. All over the Internet, wind power generator kits are coming into mainstream.
Home wind power and solar power not only are a superior source of energy during a black out, but they help save the earth while reducing your monthly power bill at the same time.
This article gives you a few things to consider first if you are looking to build a home wind power generator.
Statistics show that wind power solutions save the most money for a house or farmhouse spread over an acre or more. The open area means there are less buildings that block the wind.
Take a moment to think about the amount of wind in your area. If you do not have much wind flow, then a wind power generator will save you little. Ideally, you want to live in an area that has an average wind speed of 11 miles per hour.
Your house needs a lot of uninterrupted power supply. Combating those power outages is easy with the pollution-free wind power systems. You need no longer worry about a break in your work because of a power uncertainty.
A usual wind turbine has a tower and five blades that turn around a shaft. The height of the wind tower depends on the location of your home. If you barely get an average wind speed of 11 MPH then you will need a higher tower. If you live near the ocean where wind is constantly blowing, you can get away with a wind turbine that is not as high. The wind turbine then converts the wind energy into electricity you can use to power everything in your home. You can use a battery bank to store the power for later use.
If you are new to wind power generation, then you might be confused by different people using the words wind power generator, wind mill, wind turbine, and wind generator. All of these terms mean the same thing and are referring to the same machine.
If you are ready to take the next step in lowering your energy bill then you must check out Lance Jensen’s excellent free plans for making a homemade wind generator. Go to home wind power
Can it be that a DIY solar system was created by a man who pulled an old TV lens from the trash?
A Worldsnest writer created a DIY homemade energy system by digging in a garbage can. He has made a 6 kwh solar power system for under $5,000. A 6 kwh solar power system with PV panels and professional install costs about $70,000.
What really gets my goat is that the powers that be in the United States want us all to think that after 15 years, and hundreds of millions of dollars in “government grants” to big oil companies to develop alternative energy projects, they could not come up with a system with this much yield for so cheap. Whatever! Chevron, Exxon, and the U.S. Department of Energy are not interested in these kinds of DIY homemade solar systems because they can’t make money off it. Big oil wants an alternative solution that keeps you as a paying customer while the U.S. government wants to be able to tax the solution. If everyone could pull as much energy as they needed completely from the air, the government could not get tax revenues with such a system, unless they taxed sunlight. Both big oil and the U.S. government only want an alternative energy solution that enriches them.
Big oil and their lobbyists that buy Congressmen will not let a DIY homemade solution reach mainstream America. They will not and can not allow you to create your own electricity completely free.
The truth gets much darker than this. The oil trade is killing average people in Nigeria, Burma, and other countries. Nigeria and Burma are just two countries in which big oil has brought great harm and death to average people. Big oil is telling the Nigerian government where they want their luxury houses to be built. The government is sending in bulldozers to remove entire neighborhoods of poor people. They are even destroying churches. You can find videos of what is happening in Nigeria courtesy of YouTube.
Nigeria is only a portion of the cruelty to people in the name of profits for big oil. The U.N. Security Council has condemned the Burmese military junta for its treatment of its people. All companies have left the region except for Chevron. While the pipe line was being built, supervised by oil executives, the Burmese military junta forced villagers along the pipeline into slavery. Here are a Burmese citizens own words, “When there was no pipeline, there were no problems with soldiers. No soldiers came to this area. The soldiers came when we were harvesting rice. After the pipeline reached our village, we were told we had to work for the white people at gun point. We were forced by the soldiers into slavery. If we said we had to plant rice and would not do work for the white people, they said they would kill us and all our children. Because of the white people, our home was destroyed and the men had to run into the jungle or be killed. Many were killed. My husband escaped into the jungle. I waited for him to come back. While I was waiting, a soldier walked up to me and hit me with his rifle. I hit my head on a stone when I fell and lost consciousness. When I awoke, my baby had been burned alive in a fire. She did not cry. Her body was burned and all black.”
So this ordinary American created a DIY homemade solar system that could end our huge dependency on oil. The U.S. Department of Energy has given big oil millions of dollars in so called “research grants” for alternative energy development. Notice that no one has produced a solution as good and as cheap as this ordinary American in the video below. Has the U.S. Department of Energy been running a scam on tax payers that has benefited big oil for all these years? I think it is a valid question after we see what a man with no research budget whatsoever has come up with and even used parts from the trash to build it.
The video is below so that you can watch it and decide on the merits of this point for yourself.
The U.S. people buy 500,000 barrels of oil a day from Nigeria. Nigeria is the 6th largest supplier of oil to the U.S.
When U.S. oil exploration companies found oil in Nigeria, in order to get the approval from the Nigerian government to drill, U.S. oil companies lied to the Nigerian government telling them that the money flowing into the country was going to be good for the Nigerian people.
This was a lie told to the Nigerian people so that oil companies in the U.S. could profit. What most U.S. consumers dont know is that their consumption of oil is killing Nigeria.
The oil trade has been killing Nigerians for years now. In the meantime, the oil companies have no remorse, in fact, they are buying the votes in Congress to delay or slow solar power development and our independence from oil once and for all.
In the video below, you will learn more about the Nigerian oil trade and its impact on average Nigerian people.
Nigerians are killing each other for who should have the right to sell oil to America.
The Nigerian government is demolishing average Nigerian homes and churches to make room for luxury housing for rich oil executives and their American workers.
A pastor who has had his church demolished in the name of the oil trade laments, “The oil boom has turned into the oil doom.”
A woman who has just had her home demolished, in the name of oil, clutches her young children and begs, “I need help. I need help.”
The Rush Limbaugh Republicans who believe “all business is good, in fact it’s downright heavenly” need to educate themselves on the oil trade.
Business has one purpose and one purpose alone, to maximize profits at any cost. In some regards, the national health care debate in the United States is another example of business going after maximum profits at any cost. How many people have the rich Health Insurance companies in America killed because they denied coverage due to a pre-existing condition? How many young people who work in the fast food and restaurant industry in America are not being provided with health care by these greedy insurance companies? How many hard working families, where both couples work, are being charged $700, $900 and even a $1,000 a month or more for health insurance?
We now see what America has become after 8 years of Republican control in which business was allowed to reign free with little, if any, governmental oversight.
So you want to solar power your home for the cheapest way possible. So the first thing you need to do is to learn about solar panels.
In order to install solar panels on your house, you need to first know if it is possible for a single solar panel to power a whole house. This is probably one of the most common questions I get asked. Usually when this question is asked, the person follows up with a list of items in their home that they would like to power with solar panels such as: my house has two bedrooms, two bathrooms, air conditioning, electric kitchen appliances, a 24″ TV, and a computer.
Unfortunately the answer is a big fat no. You can not generate enough power with just one solar panel to meet the energy consumption needs of your entire home. I have used solar panels for more than 10 years now and I have watched the technology of solar panels progress over the years. But even with the latest, most advanced solar panel, one solar panel is no where near enough power for your entire house. You will need at least 12 solar panels and 12 deep cycle batteries. If you have a central air conditioner on your roof, then you will need even more solar panels and deep cycle batteries if you want 100% of your power to come from the sun. Keep in mind that your air conditioner is the single biggest obstacle you have to tackle first if you want to run your entire house off of solar power energy.
The first aspect of solar power you must learn is that in reality, nothing is powered off of a solar panel. Your home is not like a solar power calculator where a solar panel built right into the face of the calculator can power the calculator (although in actuality a battery does exists inside the calculator that is charged by the solar panel). The only thing a solar panel does is that it charges a battery. You then plug whatever you want to run in your home into that battery by using a DC (batteries are all DC current) to AC converter or what is called an inverter. Now you don’t just use one battery as that would drain the battery too fast before your solar panels had a chance to charge it back up. You wire a string of batteries together (very easy to hook them together in parallel) to form what is called a battery bank. You then run the appliances in your home off this battery bank and not the solar panels. You do this because the appliances in your home need to have a steady supply of current. Voltage spikes that come off of solar panels due to clouds passing in between your solar panel array and the sun are canceled out by the battery bank.
You should slowly increase the number of solar panels by plugging more and more of them into your battery bank as you take more and more things in your home off of the power grid. Don’t move your air conditioner over to the solar panels at first. Instead, consider switching it to gas.
Also, if you work during the day, leave your air conditioner off. In this case, your solar panel system that is powering your whole house is generating power and making your meter run backwards as you are selling the energy during the day back to the power company. Then when you get home at night, you buy energy from them when you turn your AC on.
You should be able to cut your bill by 75% or more doing this as long as you don’t live in too hot a climate and thus don’t have to run your AC that much at night.
