Author Archives: Lemelson Center

Intern Perspective: A Summer of Real Work

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Kevin Borow spent the summer as a Lemelson Center video intern. He is currently a junior at American University.

Kevin behind the camera.

The Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation: “Such a long name,” I thought, when reading the list of internships offered through American University’s School of Communication’s Dean’s internship program. Little did I know, such a big name translates into big things going on here at the National Museum of American History. For an office that is planning its own exhibition in the Museum (set to open in 2015), runs a program inspiring young people to invent and innovate, and has published several books (look for another to be published in September), all the while coordinating interns and fellows to conduct research, one would never fathom this office consists of about 15 people.

The employees of the Lemelson Center are a unique group. Educated in fields from history to new media, they are a huge contributor to the Smithsonian and the National Museum of American History. And for the summer of 2012, I was able to count myself as one of them.

Kevin mans the camera at the Rodney Mullen interview. Photo by Laurel Fritzsch.

As a junior at American University studying film and business, I was humbled by the opportunity to intern at the Smithsonian during my first summer staying in D.C. I was treated as an employee, given responsibilities that actually held weight in the office, a rare occurrence in the life of the unpaid intern. I learned motion graphics and edited promo videos to be shown to other museums. I filmed Rodney Mullen, a pro skateboarder on the same level, if not above that of Tony Hawk and Stacy Peralta. Actual employees of other institutions don’t even get to have this much fun!

On the more serious side, I am truly grateful to the Lemelson Center and the Smithsonian to affording me this fantastic opportunity. I learned so much and worked with some of the most intelligent and passionate people I’ve ever met. I made it through the heat, the humidity, the tourists, and the metro system, all to come out on the other side richer for the experience. (And the networking opportunities were a plus…)

Universal Design and the Museum: Sensory Features

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Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of posts by Lemelson fellow Aimi Hamraie. Aimi is a PhD candidate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Emory University. Her dissertation examines Universal Design and disability. Her blogs will discuss accessibility features at the Smithsonian, particularly the National Museum of American History.

In my last blog post, I discussed different Universal Design strategies used in the America on the Move exhibit at National Museum of American History. Universal Design is the idea that spaces and products should be intentionally designed to be accessible to as many people as possible. Because museums have so many visitors and have to represent information to a range of people – of all ranges of ability, ages, and cultural backgrounds – they have adopted some very innovative Universal Design strategies.

In this post, I am going to discuss some of the design features of museum exhibits that incorporate sensory information appealing to sight, touch, sound, and even smell! Providing information through different senses is one way of doing Universal Design, because it takes into account all of the different ways that people perceive and learn.

Smell

This image from America on the Move shows a cast iron of food with a sign that says “sniff” on the lid. You can turn the handle on the pot to smell the food inside. This provides information about the food, as well as the vessel in which it would have been cooked.

 

Touch

One of the most important ways of designing for multiple senses is to provide haptic information – information that you can touch. Touch can help us understand how something feels, how it is shaped, and how its parts relate to one another. If a person has low vision, but can touch something, they will be able to get a more complex understanding of the object that is being seen. Throughout the Smithsonian, there are a number of objects that ask you to touch them in order to get more information. These are usable by anyone, and, for many of us, provide information that the text of the exhibit does not.

Here is a map that you can touch from America on the Move. It shows the layout of a house, with raised walls. If you touch more than one part of the map at once, you can think about how the rooms are spatially related to one another. At the bottom, there are railroad tracks that are also raised. Inside of each room, there is text that tells you what the room is. This text is unfortunately not raised. If you have low vision or your eyes are closed, you may be able to feel the words but you will not be able to read them necessarily. Even though some aspects of the design are accessible, others may not be necessarily.

The above sign from the National Museum of American History exhibit, The Price of Freedom: Americans at War, shows a haptic map of the exhibit with a block of Braille text to the left. A person wanting to know what is in the exhibit can look at the map, touch it, read the Braille, or do all of the above! To understand how to move through the space, there are raised tactile arrows leading from one area into another. The text inside of each space is also larger than in the previous map, so that it can be touched and read. Haptic maps such as this one make the layout of the exhibit clearer and establish better wayfinding

This image shows a red plastic model of a house in the Within These Walls exhibition at the American History museum. By touching the model, you can get a sense of the dimensions of the house and where the windows and doors are. You may not be able to read the placard below or get information about what happens inside the house, however.

The above image of a haptic model from the Wright Brothers exhibit at the National Air and Space Museum shows how a tactile map can display different kinds of information that are useful to people with different abilities. The bronze map has raised text and Braille text. It shows the details of a journey, complete with land, mountains, and a railroad. When I visited this exhibit on several occasions, the space around the map was the most crowded part of the exhibit. Adults and children were both touching the various parts of the map to get different kinds of information.

Here is a model of the Big Bang from Explore the Universe at the Air and Space museum. It is the most interesting of all of the models I have seen because it not only represents an image in three dimensional form, as the others do, but it also conveys a sense of time. On the side of the image furthest from the viewer in this image, the Big Bang begins and the bronze on the panel is relatively smooth, with small dimples and bubbles. As it moves to the left, the bubbles grow larger and more complex, demonstrating the way that matter in the universe became more complex over time. By feeling the contours of the model, as well as looking at its appearance, we get a very interesting story about how matter changed over time as the universe expanded.

Vision

Have you ever been to an exhibit where there was a lot of text that was hard to see? Maybe there was low light, or the font was too small? This image, also from the Air and Space museum, shows a high contrast display. This means that the image background and text contrast with each other so much that the text is clear. In this case, the white text on black background makes it easier to see if you have low vision, or if you have been inside of a dark exhibit for a few minutes and you are straining to see. The images of various space rocks are also backlit to make them easier to see.

 

As you go through the Air and Space or American History museums, you may notice that the videos have captions on them that describe the sounds being made and also tell you what words are being said. This serves many purposes. For people who are hard of hearing, it provides the information visually. It also is helpful for people who have hearing but may be in the exhibit at a time that is very busy.

These are only a few examples of sensory-based accessibility at the Smithsonian. As you can tell, these features are useful for everyone – not only people with particular disabilities, but also people who benefit from having information displayed in multiple ways. Visiting these exhibits and imagining what they would be like without these features helps us understand that accessibility is not an issue about individual people needing accommodations to help them get into the space, but a collective issue that benefits a broader range of people.

Stay tuned for Aimi’s final post on technological developments at museums.

Universal Design and the Museum

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Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of posts by Lemelson fellow Aimi Hamraie. Aimi is a PhD candidate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Emory University. Her dissertation examines Universal Design and disability. Her blogs will discuss accessibility features at the Smithsonian, particularly the National Museum of American History.

Universal Design is the idea that spaces and products should be intentionally designed to be accessible to as many people as possible. The idea grew out of disability access – the design or retrofit of buildings and technologies to be accessible to people with disabilities, such as wheelchair users, people with low vision, or people who are hard of hearing. Most of the time, features of the built environment that are accessible to people with disabilities are retrofits, meaning that they are added on after a design is already planned.

When a wheelchair ramp is added as an afterthought, often to the back of a building, it means that wheelchair users cannot enter in the same way as other people. Often, this means entering through an alley next to a garbage dumpster, or needing to call someone to turn on a wheelchair lift. This reinforces the notion that having a disability means that a person is disqualified from public life and community.

Photo via Creative Commons.

In the above image, a concrete ramp has been paved on top of brick stairs on the exterior of the building. The building was inaccessible to people using wheelchairs or other mobility devices with wheels. It was also inaccessible to anyone pushing a stroller or cart. These kinds of retrofits are often less desirable than better designs that take into account the effects of a design feature before the space, technology, or product is even built.

Blusson Spinal Cord Center in Vancouver. Photo by Aimi Hamraie.

In contrast, this image shows the interior of the Blusson Spinal Cord Center in Vancouver, British Columbia. This ramp is an example of Universal Design because it is the central design feature of this building and accesses every floor in the building. It is flexible and can be used by anyone – not just wheelchair users – to get to the upper floors.

Accessibility at the Smithsonian Institution

Since 1968, federal disability access laws have required the accessibility of various spaces and technologies, including buildings, public spaces, information technology, and transportation systems. Federal buildings were the first structures required to be accessible. Because the Smithsonian Institution is federally funded, it began its efforts to make museums accessible as early as the mid-1970’s. As a result, Smithsonian sites have not only been retrofitted to be more accessible, but the Smithsonian itself has developed innovative accessibility strategies and policies, including design features that follow Universal Design.

As a Lemelson fellow, I had the opportunity to look at the Smithsonian’s institutional archives on accessibility as a case study for my dissertation project on Universal Design. I am interested in how museums in the Smithsonian system use Universal Design and accessibility to disseminate knowledge and educate the public. Because the group of people visiting any Smithsonian museum is incredibly broad, I was interested to learn more about how the museums took this range of people into account in designing exhibits. The features I discuss below are in addition to those offered by the museum, such as docent tours or wheelchairs, that are in compliance with accessibility laws but do not have to do with exhibit design.

America on the Move

America on the Move is a transportation exhibit at National Museum of American History with a number of Universal Design features. These features are significant because they are so seamlessly integrated into the design of the exhibit that you will not notice them unless you know what you are looking for. For this post, I am going to focus on mobility features – meaning how the space is designed for people with disabilities, particularly wheelchair users, to move through it.

The above image shows ramps descending into a long hallway, with various vehicles on either side. From the slope of the ramps and the rails on them, you may be able to tell that this is the kind of space that may have previously had stairs. The ramps serve as elevated platforms that give you access into seeing inside of the window of the house on the right and the trailer on the left. When you get to the bottom, you can read or hear information about these parts of the exhibits on the kiosk.

The kiosks and displays, you may notice, are about two to three feet from the ground. This puts them at eye level for people who are seated in wheelchairs, people of short stature, or children who may be using the exhibit. The screens are tilted up to make them easier to read from a range of heights. The kiosks are also interactive, providing information in both text and voice for museum visitors in different languages.

Some of the other ramps are so subtle that you may miss them if you are not paying attention. This image shows a ramp that approaches a Chicago transit system bus in the exhibit. The ramp is so slight that it just appears that the floor slopes slightly upward to meet the bus. On the left, you can see a handrail that shows that it is indeed a ramp. Also notice that there are no stairs in this area. The ramp is usable to everyone.

Above, you can see that when the ramp reaches the bus, there is a flat entrance into the bus. Someone in a wheelchair can easily enter the bus without needing an additional ramp.

Now you can see inside of the bus. Although this bus was probably not accessible at the time that it was used, people using wheelchairs or strollers can easily enter the space because the first few rows of seats on the right side have been removed. When I was visiting the exhibit, I even saw a few tourists with rolling luggage enter the bus! This shows what a little bit of spatial reconfiguration can do for accessibility. Putting these features directly into the exhibit encourages multiple ways of using the space by different people.

One last design feature worth mentioning is this small theater area. Facing the screen are two rows of seats. The first row has three seats, while the back row has five. The spaces in the first row that are open are places where people in wheelchairs can join the theater and have a view from the first row. Many theaters have similar spaces, but in back rows in places with less than optimal viewing access. In this theater space, though, accessibility is privileged in the design of the space. Of course, if no one sits in these spaces, you cannot even tell! This is all part of the seamless integration of Universal Design into the exhibit.

Stay tuned for Aimi’s next posts looking at sensory features and technological developments.

Words from a Lemelson Center Intern

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Joel Pelovitz spent the summer of 2012 as a Lemelson Center intern. He is currently a senior at Muhlenberg College.

Joel Pelovitz

It is hard to believe that the summer has already come and gone right before my eyes. Over the last two months, I have had the pleasure of interning with the Jerome and Dorothy Lemelson Center, located within the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. The primary concern of the center itself is the conveyance of information regarding innovation and invention, while also sharing the story of inventor and co-founder Jerome Lemelson. As I stepped onto a busy metro car on June 4th (my first day), I was not sure what to expect upon my arrival. As this was my first professional experience within a museum, I was not entirely aware of what my role would be or what impact it would have. On top of it all, I was scheduled to start right after my orientation. Talk about jumping right in!

Once I had attended a brief yet informative orientation, I made my way to the Lemelson office located on the first floor of the museum. No sooner had I walked through the door then was I greeted by a team of friendly and accommodating co-workers. It was immediately apparent to me that the office space was a direct reflection of what the Lemelson Center stands for, that is it was an ideal representation of innovative and collaborative qualities at work. It is no wonder that all of my best ideas and contributions have taken place in this very office, amongst this dedicated group of individuals. What’s more, I found it gratifying that my ideas were given due consideration. I felt especially privileged by this because it showed me that the team really wanted me to feel and be treated as a professional.

It was not long before I started work on the Places of Invention project. POI, for short, is an exhibit set to debut in 2015, which will incorporate six different case studies. Each case study is representative of a time and place, either past or present, in which invention and creativity were prevalent. The objective of the exhibition is to instill in the minds of visitors that place matters in terms of invention and that individuals, in accordance with their communities, are usually responsible for technological breakthroughs. When I was brought on as a researcher, I knew I would be assisting in the collection of information, yet I never could have guessed how much more involved I was going to be in other aspects of the center/exhibition.

Not only was I reading through certain texts indicated by the curators, but I was actually making important connections within the readings, for which the curators expressed appreciation. I was also, on multiple occasions, able to locate new textual and visual media representations. I was glad that the information I provided was useful to the curators. Working alongside them really opened my eyes to thinking about invention in new ways, from Albert Pope and Samuel Colt in Hartford to Grandmaster Flash and DJ Kool Herc in the Bronx. After only a week of being there I was able to attend the POI Affiliates Project Workshop at which representatives from all museums involved in the project were present. I participated in two of the floor design meetings with Roto (the exhibition design firm hired on to build the space) and contributed three different potential interactive ideas. I could literally see the design phase progressing and materializing before me!

One of the interactive ideas that I designed was a simplified version of a talk box. What a talk box does is channel sound frequencies from an electronic source such as a musical keyboard, guitar amplifier, or a computer into a tube which is then placed in the user’s mouth. The mouth then acts as an acoustic prism, which by changing its shape effectively achieves sound modulation by manipulating wavelengths. What this means in English is that by connecting a sealed-off apparatus equipped with a tube to the top of a speaker, it leaves nowhere for the sound to exit but through the tube. One then simulates forming words with their mouth and the speaker talks! I was personally able to prototype a working model in the office with Steve Madewell (the Interpretive Exhibits Coordinator), who expressed great interest in potentially using it for the center’s acclaimed Spark!Lab. The Spark!Lab is a hands-on workshop where children can put their creativity to work in designing their own inventions.

Aspiring curator, inventor and guitarist at work

The experience I had while interning at the Smithsonian was better than I ever could have imagined. As museum curation has been a strong consideration of mine for a career path, my time here has given me true insight into the behind the scenes operations within a museum setting. It has perfectly aligned my interests in both history and technology. My father is an engineer and I had also considered engineering in the past. My father’s work connected him with long-time family friend and business associate, Ralph Baer, inventor of the original “Brown Box” videogame console, the Simon light game and other commercial products. Having been raised in such a creative environment — in which even my childhood toys could be inspiration to Ralph and my father — I developed a fascination with technology. Memories of my childhood exposure to their collaboration have resurfaced and in working with the Lemelson team I have only reinvigorated that fascination. Thank you to all in the Lemelson office for making me feel like a true member of the team!

NPR Announces “What’s Your Big Idea?” Video Contest

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Did you know that high school students have come up with all of the following ideas?

  • how to turn yard waste into hydrogen fuel
  • a new navigation system for traveling through space
  • a new way to detect cancer early
  • how to make medical tests using radiation less dangerous

It’s no news to us here at the Lemelson Center that you people have big and great ideas. NPR thinks along the same lines and is challenging thinkers ages 13 to 25 to share their bright ideas through video.

Videos will be shared on NPR’s YouTube channel and Facebook page and the very best idea will be shared with a leader in the most relevant field of science.

Find out more at NPR.

The 2012 Spark!Lab Plastic Bag Invention Contest is Now Open!

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The Spark!Lab Invention Contest is simple: gather some used plastic bags, use them to create a useful or whimsical invention, snap a photo and email it to us (along with your name, age, and hometown) to sparklab@si.edu before July 20th. If you are under 13, you must have parental permission to submit your photo.

Get creative! Your invention doesn’t need to be complicated at all. In fact, some of the best inventions start from a very simple idea or solution to a problem. Check out some of these examples to help you start!

Going Solo: Reconsidering The Role Of The Lone Inventor

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Editor’s Note: This piece originally appeared on CIO Network, a blog belonging to Forbes. It was written by Lemelson historian Eric Hintz.

Everyone knows the legend of the Silicon Valley inventor, creating amazing things while tinkering in the garage. But not everyone is a believer.

At a recent conference in Washginton, Eric D. Isaacs, the director of the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, gave a talk on “How to Save America’s Knowledge Enterprise.” In his talk, and in an opinion piece published online at Slate, Isaacs argued that “we can’t allow romantic myths about creative loners to overshadow the reality that America’s knowledge enterprise depends on the work of robust teams of highly trained experts, enabled by a world-class scientific infrastructure and supported consistently by public funds.” In other words, we shouldn’t bet on lone inventors like Thomas Edison, Mark Zuckerberg, and Iron Man’s Tony Stark; instead, we should support teams of highly-trained Ph.D.s (like Isaacs) working at big corporate and government R&D labs (like Argonne, the lab he directs).

Drawing on historical examples, Isaacs correctly points out the dozens of technicians Thomas Edison employed at his famed Menlo Park workshop and how nominally independent inventors William Hewlett and David Packard actually relied heavily on institutional support from R&D labs at Stanford University and Litton Industries to launch their startup from a garage in Palo Alto. But he is in danger of replacing one pernicious myth with another – i.e. the fantasy of a corporate or government R&D lab as a self-contained source of scientific and technological breakthroughs.

Implicit in Isaacs’s argument is a linear model of innovation, in which pure scientific research (R) leads directly to the development (D) of marketable new technologies, all occurring within the confines of the lab’s ivory tower. Sometimes this self-contained, linear model works out, but often it doesn’t. For example, in the 1930s, researchers at Du Pont’s famed Experimental Station were given carte blanche to study the chemistry of polymers, and those pure scientific investigations eventually resulted in new synthetic materials like neoprene and nylon. While Du Pont’s R&D staff developed nylon from start to finish, the idea for neoprene actually originated with a lone inventor – Father Julius Nieuwland, an ordained Catholic priest and chemistry professor at the University of Notre Dame. After acquiring the patent rights from the university, Du Pont’s scientists worked in collaboration with Nieuwland to turn his prototypes into a saleable product. So while it’s true that sophisticated R&D labs have given us transistors, lasers and futuristic materials, they do not have a monopoly on innovation. In fact, good ideas and expertise often flow across the permeable walls of the ivory tower – from lone inventors into a firm’s R&D labs.

This was true in the 1930s, and it is still true today. Accordingly, many R&D stalwarts have begun re-organizing themselves to mitigate insularism and take advantage of lone inventors and other external sources of innovation. For example, about a decade ago, Procter & Gamble found itself struggling with low R&D productivity – only 35% of the new products developed through its in-house labs were meeting financial objectives. Meanwhile, P&G realized that many of its best products emerged when designers made unexpected connections across its business units or when it sourced new ideas from outside the company. In response, P&G restructured its approach to innovation and set a strategic goal of acquiring 50% of its product ideas from outside the firm. In other words, half of all new products would originate from within P&G’s own labs, while the other half would come through them as the firm improved, scaled, and marketed nearly turnkey inventions acquired from lone inventors and small startups. The strategy, called “Connect + Develop,” has launched several successful products (like Olay Regenerist skin care creams and the Swiffer Duster) while helping P&G double its innovation success rate, even as it streamlined its R&D spending from 4.8% to 3.4% of sales.

Similarly, government agencies and their laboratories have embraced new strategies to cultivate lone inventors and other external sources of innovation. For example, in 2003, NASA inaugurated its “Centennial Challenges,” a series of competitions designed to stimulate space-related innovations by offering cash prizes to individual inventors and small startups. From 2007 to 2009, lone inventor Peter Homer won two separate challenges and $450,000 for developing a next-generation spacesuit glove, assembled in his dining room with a sewing machine. In 2010, Congress re-authorized the America Competes Act, which gave all government agencies broad authority to enact these kinds of crowd-sourcing initiatives, and established a prize clearinghouse website at www.challenge.gov. Notably, the Department of Energy, which oversees Isaacs and the Argonne National Laboratory, has sponsored eight challenges on the site with prizes ranging from $5,000 to $15,000,000.

In his Slate piece, Isaacs asks and answers his own question:

“Where are the best scientific ideas created and developed?

  • a) A garage
  • b) A basement workshop
  • c) A dorm room
  • d) A kitchen
  • e) A full-scale laboratory equipped with the latest technology and staffed with highly trained professional researchers.

It might not be romantic, but the answer is e).” 

Instead, I propose a new answer to Isaac’s quiz: f) all of the above. In framing his argument, Isaacs oversimplifies things by presenting the strategic options as a binary, “either/or” choice between lone inventors and sophisticated R&D labs. But we should not embrace one source of innovations at the expense of another. Instead, history and recent practice suggest that our best prospects for innovation will come when we leverage the strengths of both lone inventors and R&D labs, working together.

Let us know what you think – where are the best ideas created?

Lemelson-MIT Prize Winner Announced

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Dr. Stephen Quake.

Today, the Lemelson-MIT Program (a sister program of ours through the Lemelson Foundation) announced that physicist and entrepreneur Dr. Stephen Quake has been awarded the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize, an annual prize that honors an outstanding mid-career inventor who is dedicated to improving our world through technological invention.

From the press release:

Dr. Stephen Quake, one of the world’s most prolific inventors, was announced today as recipient of the 2012 $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize. An adventurer at heart, Quake relishes in the adrenaline that comes from mountain biking and ski mountaineering. It is that same rush he gets from exploring the unknown that drives him to consistently push scientific limits. Quake is being recognized for his revolutionary work in drug discovery, genome analysis and personalized medicine. He will accept the prestigious award and present his accomplishments at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology during the Lemelson-MIT Program’s sixth-annual EurekaFest, a multi-day celebration of the inventive spirit, June 20 – 23.

Raised in an entrepreneurial household with a father who worked in the computer industry, Quake was captivated by technology and its infinite applications at an early age. Quake found academic success in his high school science and math courses, and went on to earn degrees in physics and mathematics from Stanford University and Oxford University. Today, the professor of Bioengineering and Applied Physics at Stanford and investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute has more than 80 patents and four companies to his name.
“Steve is a scientific pioneer with a compelling vision of future possibilities,” said Gajus Worthington, president and CEO of Fluidigm Corporation, a company he co-founded with Quake. “He translates discoveries into inventions leading to new companies that are making significant advancements in human health.”

Read more about Dr. Stephen Quake…