Lemelson Center Studies in Invention and Innovation series

Since 1995, the Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center has been investigating the history of invention and innovation from an interdisciplinary perspective. Books in the Lemelson Center Studies in Invention and Innovation extend this work to enhance public understanding of humanity’s inventive impulse. Authors in the series raise new questions about the work of inventors and the technologies they create, while stimulating cross-disciplinary dialogue. By opening channels of communication between the various disciplines and sectors of society concerned with technological innovation, the Lemelson Center Studies advance scholarship in the history of technology, engineering, science, architecture, the arts, and related fields, and disseminate it to a general interest audience.

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American Independent Inventors in an Era of Corporate R&D

by Eric S. Hintz

ISBN: 9780262542586

Publisher: The MIT Press

Pub Date: August 17, 2021

How America's individual inventors persisted alongside corporate R&D labs as an important source of inventions.

Handprints on Hubble

An Astronaut's Story of Invention

by Kathryn D. Sullivan

ISBN: 9780262539647

Publisher: The MIT Press

Pub Date: December 1, 2020

The first American woman to walk in space recounts her experience as part of the team that launched, rescued, repaired, and maintained the Hubble Space Telescope.

Beyond Bakelite

Leo Baekeland and the Business of Science and Invention

by Joris Mercelis

ISBN: 9780262538695

Publisher: The MIT Press

Pub Date: March 17, 2020

The changing relationships between science and industry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, illustrated by the career of the “father of plastics.”

Does America Need More Innovators?

Edited by Matthew Wisnioski, Eric S. Hintz and Marie Stettler Kleine

ISBN: 9780262536738

Publisher: The MIT Press

Pub Date: April 9, 2019

A critical exploration of today's global imperative to innovate, by champions, critics, and reformers of innovation.

Internet Alley

High Technology in Tysons Corner, 1945–2005

by Paul E. Ceruzzi

ISBN: 9780262516686

Publisher: The MIT Press

Pub Date: September 23, 2011

How government military contractors and high-tech firms transformed an unincorporated suburban crossroads into the center of the world's Internet management and governance.

Power Struggles

Scientific Authority and the Creation of Practical Electricity Before Edison

by Michael Brian Schiffer

ISBN: 9780262516167

Publisher: The MIT Press

Pub Date: January 21, 2011

The development of electrical technologies that laid the foundation for Edison's work: their invention, commercialization, and adoption.

The Color Revolution

by Regina Lee Blaszczyk

ISBN: 9780262017770

Publisher: The MIT Press

Pub Date: August 31, 2012

A history of color and commerce from haute couture to automobile showrooms to interior design.

Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age

by Kurt W. Beyer

ISBN: 9780262517263

Publisher: The MIT Press

Pub Date: February 10, 2012

The career of computer visionary Grace Murray Hopper, whose innovative work in programming laid the foundations for the user-friendliness of today's personal computers that sparked the information age.