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Found 33 Stories
Chien-Shiung Wu in profile, sitting at a desk with a panel of knobs and dials in front of her.
Blog

Diverse Voices: Chien-Shiung Wu, “The Chinese Marie Curie”

Chinese-born scientist Dr. Chien-Shiung Wu made significant contributions to experimental physics that helped change what we know about the atomic world.

Passport-style photo of Baekeland wearing a hat
Symposia & Conferences

Immigration and Innovation: New Perspectives

A three-day webinar series exploring the history, impact, and contemporary experiences of foreign-born inventors in the United States.

Cover of American Independent Inventors in an Era of Corporate R&D
Lemelson Center Books

American Independent Inventors in an Era of Corporate R&D

How America's individual inventors persisted alongside corporate R&D labs as an important source of inventions. Published in the Lemelson Center Studies in Invention and Innovation book series with MIT Press.

Alexander Graham Bell seated at table, speaking into telephone while a group of men watch.
Invention Stories

Diverse Voices: Immigrant Inventors

Immigrant inventors are essential to the invention landscape.

Orange box with words Who Gets to Be an Inventor
Invention Stories

Diverse Voices: Women Inventors

Throughout American history, women with diverse backgrounds and interests created inventions that change our lives every day.

Sparky logo
DO Try This at Home!

Calling Young Inventors!

Spark!Lab’s 2020 Dr. InBae and Mrs. Kyung Joo Yoon Invent It Challenge needs you!

Lemelson Lightbulb Graphic Identity
Research Opportunities

Lemelson Center Travel to Collections Awards Recipients, 1999–Present

Meet past Travel to Collections Award recipients and read about their research projects based on invention collections in the Museum's Archives Center.

Detail from seven groups of script characters, broken into groups A–G, show all of the characters in the Devanagari font
Blog

Devanagari Script for the Mergenthaler Linotype

Inventor Hari Govil worked with the Mergenthaler Linotype Company to design and perfect printing equipment for the Hindi language based on the Devanagari alphabet.

An outline of a gear, pictured in solid orange, with the words (in white lettering): Think about a new invention that enhances the daily lives of older adults.
Encouraging Innovative Thinking

The 2019 Spark!Lab Dr. InBae Yoon Invent It Challenge

It's time for the annual Invent It Challenge!

Color cover of Popular Neckanics Gagazine, Christmas 1947, with the tagline, “Written so you can’t understand it.” Shows 3 oval-shaped “electronic robot-steered cars,” each with a couple kissing (“necking”) in the passenger seats, traveling down a road.
Blog

Hugo Gernsback's Unconventional Inventions

Hugo Gernsback, the “Father of Science Fiction” was an editor, publisher, author, scientist—and inventor of fantastical necessities.

Block print in black and white, showing stylized tree, river, house, sun, and clouds
Beyond Words

Inventing Green: Inventor Profiles

Contemporary inventors in diverse fields are committed to "inventing green." Here are a few of their stories . . .

3 figures from Dr. InBae Yoon US patent 3,870,048 showing 3 ring-shaped parts of his tool for minimally-invasive tubal ligations.
Encouraging Innovative Thinking

The Legacy of Dr. InBae Yoon

Dr. Yoon passionately believed—like we do—that everyone is inventive.

A young girl in traditional Hungarian dress looks at the camera over her shoulder while Charles Eisler at a podium introduces General Herbert Hargreaves during Eisler ambulance donation ceremony, Newark, New Jersey, 1943
Blog

Immigrant Inventors Giving Back

In the wake of war and revolution, Leo Baekeland and Charles Eisler served their communities.

Illustration of a family playing Magnavox Odyssey games
Blog

50 Years at 16,000 Percent Annual Growth

Ralph Baer transformed interactive entertainment and gave rise to an industry that earned nearly $102 billion in revenue worldwide in 2015.

Yellow plastic hard hat with solar-powered propeller on top, souvenir from, Knoxville World’s Fair, 1982
Invention Stories

Inventive Minds: Inventing Green

Inventive Minds: Inventing Green features the stories of historic and contemporary inventors whose work on socially-responsible technologies creates profound change for the common good.

Invention Stories

Broadcasting the Story of Invention

In 1950 a young immigrant inventor and entrepreneur is celebrated on a new radio program. Find out why Joe Gerber was called the “young man in a hurry!”

Invention sketch of accessible snowboard
Invention Stories

Inventive Minds: Everyone Is Inventive

Throughout American history, inventors and innovators have used their imaginations to create, improve, and promote inventions and innovations that shape our everyday lives. Explore their stories in the Inventive Minds gallery.

Barbara Walters interviews inventors Jacob Rabinow and Marion O'Brien Donovan in 1975.
Beyond Words

From the Archives: Daytime Talk and Invention

Jacob Rabinow and Marion O'Brien Donovan’s inventive lives intersected in 1975, when they both appeared in two episodes of "Not For Women Only" titled “Inventors and Inventions.”

The Spirit of Invention book cover, with a montage of images of diverse inventors and inventions
Lemelson Center Books

The Spirit of Invention

The Spirit of Invention: The Story of the Thinkers, Creators, and Dreamers Who Formed Our Nation (2009) by Julie M. Fenster tells the stories of both heralded and unknown inventors from all eras and walks of life.

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Invention Stories

The Way the Ball Bounces

Asian people have been inventors and innovators for many centuries.

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