Citations › Citation ID: 68

C68. BOOK: Daniel Konstanski, The Secret Life of LEGO Bricks: The Inside Story of a Design Icon (Unbound, 2022), p. 138-139.

The piece which emerged from this effort is known throughout the fan community as a ‘headlight brick’. Within the LEGO Group it is named for its creator: the Erling brick. This piece has become one of the most universally used parts in the entire element portfolio, having been included in over 5,000 sets to date.

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Their first question was where the sideways stud should be situated. Placing it directly in the middle of the 1x1 brick’s face, by far the most aesthetically pleasing choice, was rife with issues. First, it meant the stud’s centre would be at a height of exactly three sections. While that may not seem problematic intuitively, Erling had enough foresight to see a major issue stemming from the fact that bricks are six sections tall but only five sections wide. Any brick attached sideways at a height of three sections would not be flush with either the top or the bottom of Erling’s proposed element, leaving an unsightly, and out of LEGO® System, gap of half a section. Accordingly, he elected to slide the sideways stud up ... Doing it that way meant an attached brick’s edge lined up with the top of Erling’s element, making it much more useful. Designers who developed what would later become known as LEGO® Technic bricks had placed the centres of their holes for snaps in the same location, so it is highly likely Erling was influenced by their earlier work.

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Erling created a design which not only rotated a stud ninety degrees but recessed it so that it was only four sections away from the opposite face instead of five. This created a small lip at the bottom of his new component that was both a section tall and deep.

Being able to build through in two directions was not just a conceptual exercise; Erling made
it a reality by creating an opening that could receive a stud on the vertical wall opposite the one
which had the outward-facing stud. Erling Didriksen did not know it at the time, but he had just
laid the first foundation stone for a whole genre of building techniques, which would come to
be known as sideways building within the LEGO Group and studs not on top, or SNOT, to fans.

Erling Didriksen designed the Headlight Brick (part 4070), which was introduced in 1980 and made SNOT building techniques possible for the first time.