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Lego Mindstorms
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===Development of Mindstorms Brand=== The Lego Mindstorms product line was the first project of "Home Education", a division of [[Lego Education]] established by employee Tormod Askildsen in 1995. Askildsen, who had previously spent ten years working for Lego Education, had grown frustrated working with teaching professionals and wanted to create an improved educational experience that was delivered directly towards children. Home Education decided to incorporate technology into their products based on [[market research]] that concluded that children found learning that involved technology interesting.<ref name="39years">{{cite web |last1=Heiseldal |first1=Are |title=Tormod Askildsen: One Last Chat with LEGO's AFOL Advocate |url=https://bricknerd.com/home/tormod-askildsen-one-last-chat-with-legos-afol-advocate-11-16-22 |website=brickner.com |date=16 November 2022 |publisher=Brick Nerd |access-date=5 November 2023}}</ref> Lego Mindstorms started development in April 1996.<ref name=Oliver>{{cite journal |last1=Oliver |first1=David |last2=Roos |first2=Johnathan |date=2003 |title=Dealing with the unexpected: Critical incidents in the Lego Mindstorms team |journal=Human Relations |volume=56 |issue=9 |pages=1057β1082 |doi=10.1177/0018726703569002 |s2cid=145417935 |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247717649 |access-date=26 March 2019 |archive-date=27 January 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210127130821/https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247717649_Dealing_with_the_Unexpected_Critical_Incidents_in_the_LEGO_Mindstorms_team |url-status=live}}</ref>{{rp|1061}} The concept for the set was based on technology created in partnership with the MIT Media Lab. MIT Media Lab had been experimenting with combining Lego and programming since the early 1980s, and Lego had previously commercialized some of this technology as classroom products in the [[Lego Education|Lego Dacta]] line. The programmable brick (or pbrick<ref name=GoldenRCX/>) was a refinement of these early concepts, which had limited range because they had to be tethered to a computer to run.<ref name=Beland>{{cite thesis |last=Beland |first=Cristopher |date=15 December 2000 |title=Lego Mindstorms: The Structure of an Engineering (R)evolution |type=conference paper |docket=6.399J Structure of Engineering Revolutions |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221436867 |access-date=25 March 2019 |archive-date=27 January 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210127130858/https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221436867_LEGO_Mindstorms |url-status=live}}</ref>{{rp|24}} Lego had been interested in mass-producing the pbrick since its creation in the 1980s, but at the time it was considered unfeasible due to the lack of computers in schools and households and the relative expense of electrical components.<ref name=Beland/>{{rp|25}} in the early 1990s Technology began to become more of a child's life, and the toy market accordingly began shifting more towards computerized toys.<ref name=Robertson/>{{rp|37}} Many of Lego's attempts at producing electronic toys had languished at the point that Lego began developing MIT's programmable brick into a consumer product.<ref name=Oliver/>{{rp|1061}} MIT continued developing the pbrick concept, creating a "Red Brick" version between 1994 and 1996 that improved the previous version. By the mid-1990s personal computers were relatively common in households and the components required to produce the pbrick went down in price, making mass production feasible.<ref name=Beland/>{{rp|25}} Development on what would later be known as the Robotics Invention System started in 1996 as the flagship product of the newly created home-learning division of Lego Education (Lego Dacta). The product line's name "Mindstorms" was intended to express the user experience of the product, it is named after Papert's book [[Mindstorms (book)|Mindstorms]], as the user experience was similar to the [[Constructivism (philosophy of education)|educational constructivism]] concepts described in his book.<ref name=Tormod>{{cite web |url=https://lan.lego.com/news/overview/lego-mindstorms-reflections-%E2%80%93-what-happened-before-the-announcement-in-january-1998-r173/ |title=Lego Mindstorms reflections β What happened before the announcement in January 1998 |last=Askildsen |first=Tormod |date=4 December 2018 |website=lan.Lego.com |publisher=The Lego Group |access-date=26 March 2019 |archive-date=26 March 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190326211452/https://lan.lego.com/news/overview/lego-mindstorms-reflections-%25E2%2580%2593-what-happened-before-the-announcement-in-january-1998-r173/ |url-status=live}}</ref> The project's at-first low profile allowed the Mindstorms team the freedom to develop the product using operating procedures then-unorthodox to the Lego Group.<ref name=Oliver/>{{rp|1062}} Unlike traditional Lego sets, the Mindstorms Robotics Invention System did not come with step-by-step instructions.<ref name=39years/> The kit also did not have a main model, nor was the play driven by storytelling.{{Citation needed|date=August 2021}} To bridge the gap between this new play experience and pre-existing Lego ones, the Mindstorms team created a lot of opportunities for users to engage with each other, such as the creation of Mindstorms.com, Mindstorms Discovery Centers, and the [[FIRST Lego League]].<ref name=Tormod/> The creation of these experiences was done through partnerships with external groups that the Mindstorms team interacted with as equal partners, something that was uncommon for the Lego group at the time.<ref name=Oliver/>{{rp|1063}} To ease tensions between Mindstorms and more conventional products, the project team was given autonomy from Lego's product development process and instead reported directly to the company's senior management.<ref name=Oliver/>{{rp|1064}}
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