Lemelson Hall of Invention

When the National Museum of American History reopened on 21 November 2008 after an extensive two-year renovation, the Lemelson Center also debuted its new Lemelson Hall of Invention, a 3,500 square-foot exhibition gallery. The Lemelson Hall is part of a top-to-bottom renovation of the Museum’s central core. The bright, open, and flexible gallery currently features the Center’s award-winning Invention at Play exhibition.

To ensure that the Lemelson Hall of Invention is always a dynamic destination at the Museum, the Center plans to develop new exhibitions that continue to share the rich history of invention and innovation with the public.

First floor west.

Invention at Play

What do the inventors behind Post-it Notes®, robotic ants, Kevlar®, and the telephone have in common with children? Play! And it’s the inaugural subject for the new Lemelson Hall of Invention, the Center’s first dedicated public exhibition space at the National Museum of American History, as the Center proudly presents the award-winning exhibition, Invention at Play.

With its highly interactive and engaging activities created especially for families, Invention at Play focuses on the similarities between the ways children and adults play and the creative skills and processes used by inventors. Visitors of all ages will experience various playful habits of mind that underlie invention, such as curiosity, imagination, visual thinking, model building, and problem solving.

Visitors will also “meet” inventors and innovators through compelling personal stories, photos, and artifacts, and even have a chance to try learning to windsurf on the Sailboard Simulator, which is based on a design by sailboard inventor Newman Darby.

First floor west.

Be sure to visit the online version of the exhibition.

Charles Stark Draper (left) in the MIT engine laboratory, 1931. Courtesy of MIT Museum

Karl Taylor Compton (right) appointed Vannevar Bush the first dean of the School of Engineering at MIT in 1932. Courtesy of MIT Museum

Hot Spots of Invention

Invention happens everywhere. But sometimes a “hot spot of invention” takes shape when the right mix of creative people, resources, and inspiring surroundings come together.

In the 1930s, a hot spot began to form among the industrial labs and universities of New England when Karl Taylor Compton became president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He transformed the curriculum, raising the profile of science and promoting research partnerships with government.

Compton found a kindred spirit in Vannevar Bush, an electrical engineering professor and mentor to his students, and they continued to work together after Bush left MIT in 1939. When President Franklin Roosevelt—on Bush’s proposal—established the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) in 1940, he named Bush chairman. And Bush chose Compton to lead an NDRC division.

As World War II approached, the hot spot matured as the links between MIT and government grew stronger. The campus bustled with a growing network of inventive people and new research laboratories. Three of these—Charles Stark Draper’s instruments lab, the Radiation Laboratory, and Harold Edgerton’s strobe lab—contributed directly to the war effort and illustrate how the work of Compton and Bush turned Cambridge into a hot spot of invention.

First floor west.

Jerome Lemelson: Toying with Invention

Jerome Lemelson earned more than 600 patents, and about 70 of them describe toys—inflatable toys, jumping toys, toys with propellers, toys that run on tracks, target games, dolls, and more. In fact, Lemelson’s first patent, issued in 1953, was for a new kind of propeller beanie. The objects in this case are examples of Lemelson’s toy ideas and show some of the stages in inventing a new plaything.

For many inventors, sketching ideas in a notebook is a first step in the creative process. Prototypes, or models, demonstrate and test how the idea works. Patents are legal documents that describe inventions in words and drawings and give inventors exclusive rights to make and sell their work for several years.

Third floor west.