Toy block

There are mentions of blocks or "dice" with letters inscribed on them used as entertaining educational tools in the works of English writer and inventor Hugh Plat (his 1594 book The Jewel House of Art and Nature) and English philosopher John Locke (his 1693 essay Thoughts Concerning Education).

University of Pennsylvania professor of Urbanism Witold Rybczynski has found that the earliest mention of building bricks for children appears in Maria and R.L.

Called "rational toys", blocks were intended to teach children about gravity and physics, as well as spatial relationships that allow them to see how many different parts become a whole.

During the mid-nineteenth century, Henry Cole (under the pseudonym of Felix Summerly) wrote a series of children’s books.

Cole's A book of stories from The Home Treasury included a box of terracotta toy blocks and, in the accompanying pamphlet "Architectural Pastime", actual blueprints.