Download Instructions for More Than 6,800 LEGO Kits at the Internet Archive

We’ve all come across a LEGO set from child­hood and felt the temp­ta­tion to try build­ing it one more time — mak­ing the gen­er­ous assump­tion, of course, that all the pieces are in the box, to say noth­ing of the instruc­tions. If you’re miss­ing a few bricks, you can always turn to the robust sec­ondary mar­ket in LEGO com­po­nents. If you’re miss­ing the man­u­al, there’s now one place you should look first: the LEGO build­ing instruc­tions col­lec­tion at the Inter­net Archive. There you’ll find dig­i­tized mate­ri­als for more than 6,800 dif­fer­ent sets, includ­ing such pop­u­lar releas­es as the LEGO Chevro­let Camaro Z28, the LEGO Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion, and the LEGO cov­er pho­to of Meet the Bea­t­les.

Since they were first brought to mar­ket in the late nine­teen-fifties, LEGO’s sig­na­ture build­ing bricks have been pri­mar­i­ly con­sid­ered chil­dren’s toys. And of course, most of us got to know LEGO in child­hood; I myself have fond mem­o­ries of work­ing my way up to the Ice Plan­et 2002 series, with its still much-ref­er­enced trans­par­ent orange chain­saws.

But even after com­ing of age, the seri­ous enthu­si­ast need not leave LEGO behind: the com­pa­ny has put out such adult-ori­ent­ed mod­els as the Colos­se­um, Andy Warhol’s Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe, the Eif­fel Tow­er, and the Solomon R. Guggen­heim Muse­um, to name just a few whose instruc­tions are down­load­able from the Inter­net Archive.

The Metafil­ter dis­cus­sion of the Inter­net Archive’s LEGO build­ing instruc­tions col­lec­tion reveals not only that some are excit­ed indeed about the exis­tence of this resource, but also that oth­ers con­sid­er build­ing from instruc­tions to be a mis­use of the medi­um. It may be true that fol­low­ing spe­cif­ic doc­u­ment­ed steps for hours on end may encour­age a cer­tain slack­en­ing of the imag­i­na­tion. But then, it may also be true that phys­i­cal­ly work­ing one’s way through a com­plex assem­bly process can build dex­ter­i­ty and gen­er­ate ideas for lat­er freeform con­struc­tions. How­ev­er we approach LEGO, and what­ev­er age at which we approach it, we need only keep in mind the Dan­ish imper­a­tive that gave the com­pa­ny its name: leg godt — play well. Enter the col­lec­tion of instruc­tions here.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hokusai’s Icon­ic Print The Great Wave off Kana­gawa Recre­at­ed with 50,000 LEGO Bricks

The LEGO Tur­ing Machine Gives a Quick Primer on How Your Com­put­er Works

The Vin­cent van Gogh Star­ry Night LEGO Set Is Now Avail­able: It’s Cre­at­ed in Col­lab­o­ra­tion with MoMA

With 9,036 Pieces, the Roman Colos­se­um Is the Largest LEGO Set Ever

Ai Wei­wei Recre­ates Monet’s Water Lilies Trip­tych Using 650,000 Lego Bricks

Why Did LEGO Become a Media Empire? Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast #37

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.