Building towers, houses and cities is an elementary game that can be played even in the open air, with sand, branches and stones. Since the beginning of the 19th century, we know specially made building sets, mostly with wooden elements: Cuboids, cubes, columns and other architectural shapes
Around 1837/38, the pedagogue Friedrich Froebel developed building sets with simple components that were intended to promote children's elementary understanding of shapes and relationships. The big breakthrough came with the introduction and clever marketing of stone building sets, which from 1880 onwards were hardly missing in any middle-class child's room. With such building sets, children could either copy existing models or realize their own architectures.