The Lego Group
The original Lego Mindstorms Robotics Invention System was born out of a collaboration between The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Lego group. In 1985, Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, then Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of The Lego Group, heard of the work of MIT's Seymour Papert and was struck by how similar his goals of learning through building were to those of The Lego Group's newly formed educational division. The Lego Group began a partnership with Papert's Media Lab, funding their research and sharing ideas. Born out of this collaboration (and the work of Papert and collaborator Mitchel Resnik's Epistemology and Learning group) was the idea to have children use the LOGO programming language to command Lego brick robots of their own design connected to a computer. In 1988 the Media Lab created a Lego Brick compatible computer that could be used to control a robot without connection to a desktop computer. There was interest within The Lego Group to commercialize this Brick compatible computer as soon as personal computers became widespread, and in 1996 The Lego Group began developing this computer into what would eventually be known as the Robotics Invention System.