Construction set:The Embossing Company's Architectural Blocks

In his 1826 publication "The Education of Man," Friedrich Froebel, the pioneer of the kindergarten movement, wrote, "To learn a thing in life and through doing is much more developing, cultivating, and strengthening than to learn it merely through the verbal communication of ideas." In 1840 Froebel developed a series of educational toys called Froebel Gifts, a product of his belief that children learn through play. The first wooden building block set emerged as a part of this series of toys. Froebel believed that building blocks encouraged manual dexterity, spatial understanding, and imagination, and that as children played and experimented with blocks, they developed richer ways of thinking about mathematical concepts including number, size, and shape. Toy manufacturers such as F. Ad. Richter of Germany and S. L. Hill of New York City first began to produce building block sets in mass quantities in the mid-1800s, and building blocks remain a staple in the playroom and the classroom to this day.