Braun × LEGO

Announced August 24, 1972 at the hifi 72 fair in Düsseldorf, the modul 8 began with a letter from Godtfred Kirk Christiansen to Braun's board in the spring of 1971, asking whether a toy's tolerances could carry a record player. Rams went to Billund with a regie fascia under his arm. The first problem was size: the largest thing LEGO had ever moulded was the 32 by 32 stud baseplate, and a turntable needed 52 studs across to clear a twelve-inch record.

Every housing is dimensioned in LEGO units: 52 by 40 studs for the receiver, cassette deck and turntable, 24 studs on every side for the speaker cubes. Tops carry studs, undersides carry tubes, and the sides are grooved every 3.2 mm so each case reads as a stack of plates. Knudsen's engineers held the grid; Hartwein kept the fronts Braun and then made them obey it too. Knob centres sit on stud columns, label baselines on plate lines, and the speaker grilles are punched with 4.8 mm holes on the 8 mm pitch, the stud grid in negative. The only colour is the orange-red power key on the receiver.

The trade press was split. HiFi-Stereophonie measured the receiver, found it entirely respectable, and noted that its review pair of speakers had been pressed onto the receiver so firmly that separating them took two editors and a ruler. The design press was happier: form ran four pages of the system built as a tower, a bench and a low wall, with no people in any of the photographs.

There is one rule. The turntable lid is smooth, and nothing clutches to it, so the turntable always goes on top. The operating instructions, printed inside that lid as on the T 1000, are drawn as numbered LEGO building steps with no words; step 7 shows a speaker cube above the turntable, crossed out. Each base set came with twelve light grey 2 by 4 bricks for raising the speakers to ear height, and most were in a child's bedroom within a year.