Category Archives: Places of Invention

Lowell through the Lens

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This is a guest post by Jessica K. Wilson, Executive Director of Lowell Telecommunications Corporation—the  American Textile History Museum‘s  community partner in the Places of Invention (POI) Affiliates Project. 

 

We were thrilled when our friends at the American Textile History Museum (ATHM) approached us to be a part of the Lemelson Center’s Places of Invention Affiliates Project. It seemed a natural fit. For nearly twenty years, the Lowell Telecommunications Corporation—or LTC, as our members lovingly call us—has been a place where the Lowell community has visually translated their stories and ideas into multimedia shared worldwide.

We’re what in the 1970s was called a public access television station and in the late 1990s and early 2000s a community media center. Now with the advent of a movement towards all things local, we like to think of ourselves as a farm where we grow local video by doing what we do best and most often: train people from throughout the city to produce digital film and video using professional media equipment.

Locally-made video introduction to LTC featuring members of the Lowell community

LTC’s goal is to help our citizens communicate with the largest possible audience—to say something about the space they live in, people they encounter, and things they value in our community. Once this was only possible over Lowell’s cable TV broadcast signal; now with tools like YouTube and iMovie, online broadcast channels are seemingly infinite.

We’re delighted that the Smithsonian’s POI Affiliates Project provides an opportunity to take Lowell’s unique story to an even broader audience. Working with ATHM, we’re developing videos that will become part of the interactive map in the POI exhibition and website. One of the things we’re particularly interested is the way historic technology continues to shape contemporary innovation in Lowell. Textile mills and other spaces are used and re-used for new purposes. The city’s physical advantages and constraints inspire—and require—new solutions. Our POI Affiliate team plans to develop video topics around these themes.  

LTC is moving full-steam ahead. Firm believers that anyone can be a video producer with the right education, we have taken the same approach to becoming local historians. Our staff has donned our “historian” hats and are enlisting members of the Lowell community in our documentary efforts. Conversations with ATHM’s David Unger, Director of Interpretation, have made us think more deeply about the 19th-century textile industry and the way it affects city growth today—economically, demographically, and architecturally. We look forward to working with the Museum and sharing our findings with you.

LTC’s recent tour of Lowell’s City Hall building shows how it has been used and re-used to meet the changing needs of city residents.

 

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What do you want to make today?

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I held a soldering iron for the first time in my life a few weeks ago. It was exciting and frustrating at the same time. Trying to melt a bead of solder to connect two parts proved more difficult than I expected it to be. But after several attempts, I finally managed to complete my little project (you can see it in action in the video). Those weren’t the most beautiful joins, but they worked. And the sense of accomplishment I felt as I proudly wore my little blinking robot pin the rest of the day far exceeded the actual amount of work I had done. That simple act of making something, of using a new tool, even if I weren’t particularly good at it, is something I will remember for a long time.

So why was I soldering in the first place? I was at a “Mini Maker Faire” at the conclusion of a workshop at the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh’s Makeshop. A group of us from museums around the country were there to learn about Makeshop and the maker movement, and to think about ways to incorporate that philosophy into our own work. And why was a historian involved in this?

I had a few reasons for wanting to attend. First, I’m a historian of technology and it’s important to me to understand how the stuff I study and write about works. And I like tools, so getting to try out some new ones is just plain fun. But I’m also the historian on the planning team for the new Spark!Lab that will open after the renovation of the Museum’s West Exhibition Wing, so it’s my job to think about ways to infuse hands-on activities with history. And while I don’t yet have a lot of answers about how we will do that, I did get some ideas from the workshop and my personal experience with that soldering iron.

Throughout the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh, art and technology meet in whimsical ways, as this sculpture of "King Steel and Queen Iron" by Devon Smith (2001) illustrates. Photo by Joyce Bedi.

One of the workshop participants pointed out that kids are good at making the connection between the “do” and the “happen.” She suggested that, rather than just give kids tools, we could first ask what they want the tool to do, and then ask what they might invent that would do that. It seems to me that making a connection to history as the next question—how do you think people used to do this?—might work. We have actually been trying something like this in our Spark!Lab prototyping sessions. Kids and their families can pick up and examine an ice skate from about 100 years ago, look at sketches and patents for other types of ice skates invented over time, and then use the materials we provide to either invent the ice skate of the future or create something new that could move them across the ice. Spark!Lab emphasizes that invention is a process; incorporating stories from the past reveals that it is a continuum as well.

Another Makeshop project---"squishy" circuits made of boots (feet?) of clay carry electricity from the batteries to the LED lamps. Photo by Joyce Bedi.

Perhaps the one thing that surprised me most about Makeshop, though, was how much it reinforces the research we are doing for our Places of Invention exhibition. In places as different as Hollywood in the 1930s and the Bronx in the ’70s, we have identified some common threads that tend to run through creative places. Rather than a recipe, we see these characteristics as ingredients of a strategy that helps people do their best work. Many of these elements are reflected in the 21st Century Skills framework as well.

For example, flexibility is important to fostering critical thinking, problem solving, and creativity. Not only do minds need to be open to new connections and opportunities, but spaces need to be adaptable to new directions in work. Makeshop is a great example of this. Although the space is divided into three distinct areas—one for electrical projects, a woodshop, and a sewing area—everything in those spaces can be reconfigured quickly and easily. Tables and cabinets are modular and on wheels. Pegboards are metal so they can be used in the standard fashion and also with magnetic items. In short, the space is designed to suit the work, whatever it may be.

Makeshop's movable, reconfigurable tables, pegboards, and cabinets create the ultimate flexible environment. Photo by Joyce Bedi.

That flexibility also makes the space conducive to collaboration, another characteristic of places of invention. Whether it’s one-on-one work with a Makeshop facilitator (like the student volunteer who, with enormous patience, helped me wield my soldering iron) or for family groups to work together on a project, the opportunity to work with someone else and learn from each other makes for a very fulfilling experience.

But don’t take my word for it. Find a buddy, some tools, and come up with a project. Create your own place of invention. As they say at Makeshop, “What do you want to make today?”

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From the Collections: Technicolor Sets the Scene

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Within a short time she was walking briskly toward the Emerald City, her silver shoes tinkling merrily on the hard, yellow roadbed. The sun shone bright and the birds sang sweet and Dorothy . . .

In the original book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, author L. Frank Baum gave the Wicked Witch of the East a pair of powerful silver shoes that became Dorothy’s when her Kansas farmhouse dropped out of the sky and landed squarely on the witch. Whether or not Baum meant those silver shoes skipping down a golden road as a commentary on the late-19th-century debate over basing American currency on a gold or silver standard, his vision of silver shoes remained intact in early versions of the screenplay for the classic 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz. Yet the shoes were certainly not silver in the final film. While we may never be certain why Baum chose silver, we do know exactly why Dorothy’s shoes became a pair of sequin-covered, iridescent ruby slippers in the movie. The answer: Technicolor.

Photo: Only the Oz portion of the movie was filmed in Technicolor; the Kansas scenes were shot in black-and-white and toned sepia.

Inventors and MIT graduates Herbert Kalmus and Daniel Comstock, and the technically adept W. Burton Wescottfounded Technicolor in 1915  (the “Tech” in Technicolor was a nod to Kalmus and Comstock’s alma mater). In 1938, Kalmus spoke about the beginnings of the company:

“The earliest Technicolor laboratory was built within a railway car. This car was completely equipped with a photochemical laboratory, darkrooms, fireproof safes, power plant, offices, and all the machinery and apparatus necessary for continuously carrying on the following processes on a small commercial scale; sensitizing, testing, perforating, developing, washing, fixing and drying positive; printing, developing, washing, and conditioning air; filtering and cooling wash water; examining and splicing film; and making control measurements and tests.”

Photo: One of Herbert Kalmus’s former students at MIT, J. Arthur Ball, George Mitchell, and German mechanic Henry Prouch were primarily responsible for developing the three-strip motion picture camera that was used until the 1950s when color negative motion picture film was introduced. The camera was large, heavy, and loud. It was attached to a dolly to help move it around the set, and an outer box was called a “blimp” surrounded the camera mechanism to muffle the noise.

Herbert Kalmus and his team continued to tweak the invention through several iterations before it reached its full glory in the 1930s. Technicolor Process Number Four, or 3-strip Technicolor, used in The Wizard of Oz, wasn’t a type of film, though. Instead, the action was filmed with a modified motion-picture camera that contained a prism and colored filters that, in turn, separated the scene onto three different strips of black-and-white negative film. Each strip correlated to the filtered colors and was used to create an intermediary strip called a matrix. In a method similar to lithography, the matrices were then used to print the final movies that were distributed to theaters. Making a Technicolor feature film was such a complex undertaking that movie studios were required to hire specially trained Technicolor staff to oversee production. These included color consultants, under the direction of Natalie Kalmus, Herbert’s ex-wife.

A former art student, Natalie became the ultimate mediator between the lab and the silver screen, unwavering in her commitment to make Technicolor shine. She made decisions about makeup, costumes, sets, and lighting, and even went behind the camera as a cinematographer a few times. She controlled (some say with an iron fist) the aura of Technicolor, describing her role as “playing ringmaster to the rainbow.”


Photo: Natalie Kalmus wrote, “We must constantly practice color restraint.” Did that philosophy influence Adrian’s choice of muted colors for the Scarecrow’s costume?

Natalie Kalmus was the Technicolor consultant on The Wizard of Oz set. We don’t know if she played a part in transforming Baum’s silver shoes into ruby slippers or if costume designer Gilbert Adrian and screenwriter Noel Langley came to the decision independent of her influence. But with one seemingly simple change, an American icon was born.


Photo: Several pairs of ruby slippers were made for the film. The Museum’s pair have felt soles, suggesting that they were worn by Judy Garland in dance scenes.

The Museum’s collections are rich in artifacts from The Wizard of Oz and the Technicolor era, and the ruby slippers are among our most visited treasures. The image of Dorothy clicking those sequined heels together three times, repeating “There’s no place like home,” is part of our shared memory. Would the ruby slippers have attained such star status if they had remained silver?

Sources:

  1. Google Books digitized version of L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1899), p. 33, https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=qbV65PabTEYC. Accessed August 13, 2012.
  2. Richard Haines, Technicolor Movies: The History of Dye Transfer Printing (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., 1993).
  3. Herbert T. Kalmus, “Technicolor Adventures in Cinemaland,” reprinted at http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/oldcolor/kalmus.htm. Accessed August 13, 2012.
  4. Natalie M. Kalmus, “Color Consciousness,” Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers 25, no. 2 (August 1935): 139–47.
  5. “Natalie M. Kalmus Dies at 87; A Co-Developer of Technicolor,” New York Times, November 18, 1965, p. 47.
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Revolutionary Invention: Hip-Hop and the PC

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What do hip-hop music and personal computers have in common? They were both children of the turbulent 1970s, born to innovative people who, building on inventive skills and technologies, nurtured them through creativity, collaboration, risk taking, problem solving, flexibility, and hard work. As with all inventions, their parents created them using some existing technologies. Hip-hop music evolved from adaptations of sound recording and playback equipment, while personal computers were built on integrated circuits, or “microchips,” co-invented in 1959 by Robert Noyce of Silicon Valley.

Imagine the social, cultural, economic, and political upheavals in America during the 1960s and 1970s. Picture the urban decay happening in inner-city areas of many major metropolises. Then picture the suburban communities that had burgeoned after World War II, representing the American Dream of where and how to live. Within these vastly different contexts, the Bronx, New York, and Silicon Valley, California, became places of invention—for hip-hop music and personal computers, respectively.

From "Yes Yes Y'all." Photo by John Fekner, copyright Charlie Ahearn

By the 1970s, the Bronx served as a national symbol of urban blight. Cut off from the rest of New York City by the Cross-Bronx Expressway, the primarily black and Puerto Rican residents were left to their own devices to deal with crime, drugs, dilapidated housing, few public services, and fewer job opportunities. Meanwhile, across the country, the relatively new, sunny suburbs between San Jose and San Francisco (which became known collectively as “Silicon Valley”) attracted primarily middle- and upper-class white, well-educated residents, many of whom were employed by the rapidly growing semiconductor industry there. Unlike the Bronx, Silicon Valley already had a reputation as a place of invention.

G Man and his crew DJ-ing at a park Bronx, New York, 1984 © Henry Chalfant

Sometimes lack of material resources encourages inventiveness. People in poor communities in America and around the world put their creativity to work on a daily basis using whatever materials are available. In the Bronx, residents searching for innovative, non-violent ways to express themselves took advantage of the limited resources around them to create the technology and artistry of a new kind of music. As Grand Wizzard Theodore (regarded as the inventor of the hip-hop scratch) said, “Hip-hop came from nothing. The people that created hip-hop had nothing.  And what they did was they created something from nothing.”[i] People like DJ Grandmaster Flash had electronics training and used those skills to adapt record players, speakers, and other stereo system elements to invent the new musical sounds, tools, and techniques that became hip-hop.

In resource-rich Silicon Valley, people like Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs had computer experience, access to lots of new technologies, and networks with people in the industry. Among other activities, they were involved in the Homebrew Computer Club, which was founded by electronics hobbyists in a Menlo Park garage in 1975 and later met in a Stanford University auditorium. The two Steves lived and worked in a prime location to invent and promote their personal computer, the Apple I. Although not the first personal computer (that credit goes to John Blankenbaker’s 1971 Kenbak-1), the Apple is arguably the most famous.

What inventors and innovators in Silicon Valley shared with Bronx inventors and innovators was what might be termed “counter cultural” perspectives. Both groups were interested in democratizing their respective inventions—although hip-hop DJs and computer tinkerers probably wouldn’t have expressed it quite this way at the time! In the Bronx, the pioneers of hip-hop wanted to create their own music, uniquely representative of their community, away from the disco clubs in Manhattan and without mainstream limits.

Silicon Valley East. Flickr photo by Andrei Z.

In Silicon Valley, they wanted to break away from the corporate and government control of huge mainframe computers and create small, personal computers for themselves, their friends, and eventually the larger public. As Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak remembered in the 2006 documentary, In Search of the Valley, “There was lots of talk at Homebrew [computer club] about social revolution, we were going to have our own tools at home and own our own computers and not be slaves to what our employers wanted us to use.”

Another important element shared by inventors and innovators in the Bronx, Silicon Valley, and indeed all of the communities featured in the Lemelson Center’s Places of Invention exhibition project was the support of like-minded individuals who collaborated as well as competed to further creativity. In the end, it turns out you’re not necessarily limited by limited resources. What you need is imagination, adaptability, perseverance, encouragement from your community, and eventually a wider, welcoming market. Hip-hop music and personal computers ended up revolutionizing not only American but also global society and culture.

Many thanks to Eric Hintz and Laurel Fritzsch for their expertise on these two Places of Invention!

[i] Mark Katz, Groove Music: The Art and Culture of the Hip-Hop DJ (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 253.

 

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Academic Hip-Hop

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Opening panel discussion at the Remixing the Art of Social Change: Expanding the Cipher conference on July 7, 2012.

As a Midwestern Caucasian female—whose musical tastes run more towards classic rock— tasked with researching the history of hip-hop music in the Bronx during the 1970’s and early 80’s, I cannot avoid approaching this subject from an outsider’s perspective. What authority do I have to tell this community’s story in the Lemelson Center’s Places of Invention Exhibit? This same insider/outsider perspective conflict also exists within the academic community teaching courses at colleges and universities on hip-hop music.

I recently attended a panel discussion at Howard University during the “Words Beats & Life” conference about just this conflict. Panelists Popmaster Fabel and Dr. Mark Anthony Neal discussed the state of hip-hop music in the academic environment. Popmaster Fabel holds a high school diploma but is an adjunct professor teaching courses on hip-hop at New York University; Dr. Neal attended the State University of New York at Buffalo and is now a professor at Duke University and the author of several books on African American history and culture. During the panel Fabel argued that a person can’t understand hip-hop, and consequently doesn’t have the authority to teach about hip-hop, unless they’ve performed hip-hop music. He said that his “degree” comes from being a hip-hop practitioner in the Bronx during the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. Neal countered that although practitioners of hip-hop who are also professors provide a valuable insider perspective, professors with academic training put hip-hop into a wider social and historical context, such as how hip-hop artists relate to social constructs of masculinity or the social and cultural effects of urban planning. By the end of the panel, both speakers concluded that insider and outsider perspectives are valuable and should be included in hip-hop courses.

This made me feel much better about telling the story of hip-hop music in Places of Invention. My outsider perspective enables me to put hip-hop music into a context that people may not expect to find it in—technological invention. I am equipped to discuss how hip-hop music relates to technological invention and its impact on society and culture. The conference also served as a reminder that the voices of practitioners need to be key components within the exhibit. Popmaster Fabel and Dr. Mark Anthony Neal’s discussion has helped me appreciate that non hip-hop practitioners such as myself can bring valuable insights to the story of hip-hop music.

Mello-D and the Rados perform at the conference. Video by Laurel Fritszch.

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On the Road with Smithsonian Affiliations: Places of Invention in Western Massachusetts

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This is a guest post by Jennifer Brundage, a National Outreach Manager for Smithsonian Affiliations and a Lemelson Center Advisory Committee member.

Working in a Smithsonian office devoted to national outreach, I am very fortunate to travel a lot for my job.  My department, Smithsonian Affiliations, fosters long-term collaborative partnerships with museums and cultural institutions nationwide. In our ongoing quest to identify potential partners, I recently found myself traversing western Massachusetts. Both of the museums I visited have recently opened exhibitions that interpret their cities and regions as centers of invention. Having keenly followed the Lemelson Center’s research on the relationship between innovation and location for their upcoming Places of Invention (POI) exhibition, I was struck (and inspired) by how many similar characteristics were highlighted in the museums I visited.

A glimpse at the Museum of Springfield History's exhibition on the city's history of innovation. Photo by Jennifer Brundage.

The Springfield Museums’ new, recently opened Museum of Springfield History documents the many innovations that sprang from this city. Through the lens of POI, I immediately wondered, Why here? The answer was the Springfield Armory. The Springfield site was chosen for an armory in 1777 by General George Washington and closed during the Vietnam War in 1968. (Because the Harper’s Ferry Armory and Arsenal was destroyed during the Civil War by another Springfield native, abolitionist John Brown, the Springfield Armory was America’s first, and last, federal armory.) As is well-documented by the POI team, research and development funded by the government is often a magnet for invention—in this case, for cutting-edge engineering and manufacturing processes. Because of the need to produce firearms quickly and easily during the War of 1812, the Springfield Armory combined the use of interchangeable parts (already done in France), with a rapid method of production. The result, called the “American System,” was precise mass production that revolutionized industry worldwide. (The Springfield Armory is now a National Historic Site.)

"Springfield Bicycle Club--Bicycle Camp--Exhibition and Tournament, Springfield, Mass, U.S.A., Sept. 18, 19, 20, 1883." Color lithograph by Milton Bradley and Co., Springfield, Massachusetts. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Not only did the Armory’s workers contribute to this culture of innovation, but so did the network of contractors in the surrounding region. During the Civil War-era, inventor Milton Bradley moved to Springfield to set up the state’s first color lithography shop. Looking for additional purposes for his lithography machine, Bradley created a board game called “The Checkered Game of Life,” a popular game, now revised, that is still available today. Seeing bored Civil War soldiers stationed in Springfield, Bradley also began to produce chess, checkers and backgammon sets. A board game empire was born. The Milton Bradley Company also was the first American company to make croquet sets.

Board games weren’t the only entertainment to be born in Springfield. Basketball originated here as well, in 1891. A physical education teacher at the YMCA International Training School, James Naismith, introduced the game to his class of 18 young men (literally using a basket tacked to a balcony 10 feet above ground). Within three years, it was being played around the world.

Later, bicycle makers Charles and Frank Duryea, also of Springfield, founded the Duryea Motor Wagon Company in 1896, one of the first companies to build and sell gasoline powered vehicles. (A Duryea automobile is in the collection of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.)

Dr. Seuss and the Cat and the Hat, Dr. Seuss National Memorial Sculpture Garden at the Springfield Museums. Photograph by Jennifer Brundage.

Springfield’s most famous native son, though, might be Theodor Geisel—otherwise known as Dr. Seuss. The Dr. Seuss National Memorial Sculpture Garden at the Springfield Museums does a great job of juxtaposing the historic images of Springfield’s main street that inspired Geisel with the fanciful illustrations of houses, cars, and people as they were ultimately re-imagined in the creative author’s books.

An hour away in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the Berkshire Museum presents its “hometown” inventors in the Feigenbaum Hall of Innovation. As early as the Revolutionary War, Stephen Crane, owner of the Liberty Paper Mill in Boston, was making paper from cotton—paper that fueled the revolution through its use in patriotic newspapers and broadsides. By 1799, his son Zenas Crane founded his own paper mill, Crane & Co., at an ideal spot on the Housatonic River in Dalton, Massachusetts, in the Berkshires.

The Feigenbaum Hall of Innovation, Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Photo by Jennifer Brundage.

Even though it was eventually discovered that pulp from trees made paper production cheaper, Zenas Crane and his sons continued to insist on using only waste cotton as a suitable raw material. In 1849, they introduced silk threads into the fiber of bank-bill paper, an invention designed to prevent counterfeiting currency. Their dedication to tradition as well as innovation paid off handsomely. In 1879, Crane & Co. won the first contract to produce the paper for the United States currency. Our money is still printed on paper printed by Crane, which continues to introduce technical innovations that protect the security of currencies worldwide.

The Berkshire Museum's invention curriculum--definitely try this at home! Photo by Jennifer Brundage.

Another phenomenon documented by the POI team is the way in which an area’s creative community is fed by, and in turn, nourished by, its place of invention. This is certainly true in the Berkshires, home to many of America’s greatest artists and thinkers. It is in the land-locked Berkshires that Herman Melville wrote Moby Dick, where Norman Rockwell painted some of his most iconic images of America, and where Edith Wharton created the luxurious environment that informed her best-selling novel, The House of Mirth. This mix of creativity and invention is captured so well in the Berkshire Museum’s “Use Your Noodle” elementary school curriculum. Modeling the invention process itself, a box of noodles challenges students to take an everyday object—pasta—and engineer models for math, physics, geometry problems and more.

It’s exciting to experience the truth of the Lemelson Center’s assertion that, while they have chosen historic and contemporary examples for their exhibition, invention can happen anywhere. Every place with the right mix of inventive people, ready resources, and inspiring surroundings is a potential place of invention. Submit your stories and tell us about your own place of invention!

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And We’re Off! The “Places of Invention” Affiliate Pilot Project Kick-Off Workshop

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Newark, Ohio linen postcard, 1942, Curt Teich & Co, Chicago

Whiskey,
Prohibition
and fiberglass—

 

Large-scale fermentation—

Oak Ridge, TN billboard, 1943, when the site was one of the centers for work on the Manhattan Project. Photograph by Ed Wescott.

1853 Lowell, MA patent model for boot and leather sewing machine, William Wickersham, NMAH

 

 

 

the Manhattan Project’s
secret city of Oak Ridge, Tennessee—

 

 

 

Cycles of invention
over 300 years in
Lowell, Massachusetts —

 

 

 

Pianist and composer Earl “Fatha” Hines, pioneer of the Pittsburgh sound, Columbia recording featuring "57 Varieties," NMAH

 

 

 

Pittsburgh’s distinct jazz sound—

 

Mary Lou Williams, Pittsburgh jazz pianist and composer, 1944 music folio, Archives Center, NMAH

 

 

 

 

 

Attendees at Seattle's PAX Prime—one of the world's largest gaming events, 2009, photograph by Kiko Villasenor

 

 

 

 

 

 

Seattle’s locus as the center of
a thriving international gaming market—

 

These and other details about local places of invention were recently shared by representatives from six Smithsonian Affiliate museums and their community partners as part of a kick-off event for the Lemelson Center’s Places of Invention Affiliates Pilot Project. The Lemelson Center is working with these Affiliate partners on projects that document invention and innovation in their communities. When complete, developed material will be an integral part of an interactive digital map in our exhibition—yet another lens for examining historic and modern communities where people, resources, and spaces have come together to spark inventiveness. The material also will appear on the Places of Invention website where visitors from around the world will be able to comment and add multimedia about their own places of invention. Equally important, POI-related public programs will take place in each Affiliate community.

Participants in the project are:

The day-long workshop on June 15th at the National Museum of American History was led by Dr. Lorraine McConaghy, a public historian based at Seattle’s Museum of History and Industry. Affiliate museums and their partners were joined by representatives from Smithsonian Affiliations, the National Science Foundation and the Lemelson Center. Through a series of presentations and brainstorming sessions, Dr. McConaghy taught the group how to research, document, and find an interpretive pathway for a topic that will become part of the Places of Invention exhibition and website when it opens in 2015.“Let’s be reflective,” McConaghy advised. “Think about your topic as an opportunity to engage your community in invention and innovation and inspire people to think of their own place as a place of invention.”

A lively and gregarious discussion provided no shortages of possible topics, such as:

Super Slurper flake, photograph by George Robinson. Courtesy of USDA.

Mass-production of penicillin as just one of the inventions out of Peoria, Illinois’ USDA-NCAUR lab: Behold the mighty “Super Slurper,” the cornstarch-based superabsorbent polymer used in everything from disposable diapers to biodegradable packing peanuts and plastic utensils; protective seed coatings to fuel filters. It’s even used by archivists to dry out waterlogged books and prevent mold.

By close of day, the teams had come up with thought-provoking possible titles: War Ends, Healing Begins: The Rise of Nuclear Medicine; From Field to Function: Agricultural Research in Peoria, Illinois; How Prohibition Spawned Fiberglass: Newark, Ohio, 1920–1933; and Forgotten Pioneers of the Pittsburgh Sound, to name a few. These topics and titles are not set in stone, but the exercise was a valuable one for all of us thinking about how to create the most compelling content for each community.

I’m thrilled to be directing this process as the new Places of Invention Affiliates Project Coordinator. I look forward to sharing this experience with you in a series of blogs written by Affiliate museums, their community partners, Smithsonian Affiliations, and Lemelson staff. I love the work that Smithsonian Affiliations does—I’ve seen first-hand the ways that its programs foster the exchange between Affiliate museums and the Smithsonian, broadening each institution’s reach. I see the Affiliates Pilot Project as an opportunity to take this relationship even further, creating a new model for collaborative co-creation of exhibition content that we hope will extend to another 20 Affiliate museums. As my colleague Monica Smith points out, we are the prototype for the Affiliates Pilot Project.  I hope you will join us—sharing your suggestions and comments as we move forward in this inventive process.

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Inventing an Exhibition

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At the Lemelson Center we often talk about how we need to “live our mission” and “be innovative” in our work. So not only do we study invention and innovation, but also we apply inventive and innovative approaches to our research and outreach activities. We aim to be creative, solve problems, take risks, practice flexibility, share ideas and communicate clearly, be interdisciplinary, and collaborate well, always striving to do things as a team in new and different ways. In the larger educational world these approaches are among the 21st Century Skills being promoted to help today’s youth become the inventors and innovators of tomorrow.

As the project director for the Center’s Places of Invention exhibition, I am struck by how much the exhibition development process uses those invention skills and mirrors the invention process generally. For the Center’s Spark!Lab we have distilled the invention process into a series of phrases, which are featured in our Inventors’ Notebook—Think It, Explore It, Sketch It, Create It, Try It, Tweak It, and Sell It. These also happen to be key steps along the path we are traveling to create the Places of Invention exhibition for 2015.

Developing museum exhibitions is a more time-consuming and complex process than most people would probably think, and the Places of Invention (POI) exhibition certainly has a longer history than most. The moment of conception, at least in terms of Lemelson Center scholarship, really began with our first symposium, “The Inventor and the Innovative Society,” back in 1995. As the Center grew and evolved, we continued to research inventors and innovators, study the invention process, and examine the relevance of place and culture, which led to the 2005 “Cultures of Innovation” conference at the National Museum of American History.

In 2007 the Center hosted the first Lemelson Institute at which “an interdisciplinary group of scholars and practitioners met at the Lemelson Archives on the shore of Lake Tahoe to examine the relationship between physical spaces and creativity. What is it about a particular place that excites a creative mind and makes it a ‘place of invention?’ How do creative people shape the spaces in which they work? What combinations of elements make one place a hotbed of innovation while a similar place may founder? These questions and many more were discussed at the first Lemelson Institute through case studies of creative people, new and existing spaces, and innovative regions.”[i] The resulting Institute report provoked us to decide that the topic could be further explored and creatively disseminated to a wider audience through a family-friendly exhibition in the Lemelson Hall of Invention at NMAH.

In 2009, the Lemelson Center’s POI team, with assistance from grant writer Carol Inman and museum evaluator Randi Korn, developed our initial exhibition concept into a National Science Foundation grant proposal, which was thankfully awarded in September 2010. This funding allowed us to move onward from “Think It” to “Explore It”—we could hire a museum evaluation firm and an exhibition design firm to help us develop our intellectual and historical content into an interactive and hopefully highly engaging physical exhibition. During summer and fall 2011 we worked with Randi Korn and Associates, Inc. to conduct front-end evaluation with museum visitors about the POI exhibition concept and initial content ideas.

Finding, reviewing, selecting, and contracting an exhibition design firm took place over about a six-month period. In March 2012 we officially hired Roto to help us with what the Smithsonian calls the “10% design phase” of an exhibition project. During this stage of the collaborative process, the Lemelson Center/NMAH team and the Roto team are working together closely to develop the exhibition content areas and interactive components, discuss possible objects, images, and tone and voice of the exhibition text, and create floor plan options. These current activities constitute the “Sketch It” and the beginning of the “Create It” steps of the invention path.

When the 10% design phase ends in September 2012, we will be ready and eager to move onward and upward through the “Create It,” “Try It,” and “Tweak It” steps during 2012–2014. We hope you will join us as we travel along this path. When the final product is ready to go on the market, as it were, we certainly hope it will attract and serve a diverse array of excited museum visitors when NMAH’s West Exhibition Wing reopens in 2015. Stay tuned to this blog for more reports on the exhibition invention process between now and then!

[i] Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, Places of Invention: The First Lemelson Institute (August 16-18, 2007): p. 2.

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Much More than a Garage, a Place of Invention

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19th Ave NE Garage today

Early in May, as spring rain deluged the car, I quickly lowered the window to snap one photo of a modest garage on 19th Avenue Northeast in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Surely observers would have wondered what was notable about this particular garage. Well, nothing actually, but formerly it was the site of the Hermundslie family’s garage where Medtronic, now a leading multinational medical technology company, was born. Like more famous garages in Silicon Valley that begat Apple and Hewlett Packard, the former 800-square-foot garage (made out of two railway boxcars!) served as a convenient, no-rent location for brothers-in-law Palmer Hermundslie and Earl Bakken to found their company in 1949. Their primary business was servicing electrical medical equipment, earning manager Palmer and technician Earl a whopping $8 in revenue during their company’s first year.

Medtronic Garage in 1930

Inside the humble garage in 1957, Earl drew schematics on envelopes and grocery bags during an unbelievably short four-week development process of the first wearable, external, battery-powered transistorized pacemaker at the behest of Dr. C. Walton Lillehei, “the father of open-heart surgery” at the University of Minnesota’s Variety Heart Hospital. “[The] prototype, housed in aluminum and containing only two transistors, had been intended for tests with dogs but was used on human patients within days of its invention. Soon afterward, Bakken and his employees introduced a more refined version of the transistor pacemaker in a black plastic shell; about ten of these went into clinical use at the University. Later in 1958, Medtronic began manufacturing a commercial version in white plastic—the ‘5800’. All three versions were essentially identical in circuitry and other interior features”. [1]  This was just the beginning, as Medtronic really boomed after purchasing rights in 1960 to produce and market the implantable pacemaker developed by and named for inventor Wilson Greatbatch and surgeon Dr. William Chardack.

Earl Bakken working inside Medtronic garage, c 1955

Our garage drive-by was the first stop during a tour of Earl Bakken and Medtronic history-related sites courtesy of my expert guide, Dr. David Rhees, Executive Director of The Bakken Museum. David is a long-time advisor to the Museum’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation where I work, and he was thrilled that we plan to feature Minneapolis/St. Paul, a.k.a. “Medical Alley,” in our Places of Invention exhibition. Since this case study highlights the invention of the wearable pacemaker by Earl Bakken, I was interested in learning more about key sites in Earl’s life and work as part of my research about Medical Alley.

The Heights Theatre today

One of my favorite stories is about how young Earl (born in 1924) was inspired to become an electrical engineer after seeing Boris Karloff’s 1931 “Frankenstein” at the Heights Theatre on Central Avenue near his childhood home in Minneapolis.  So in the pouring rain David drove me by Earl’s house and then on to the now-renovated theatre to take photos. He told me about how fun it was to help Earl celebrate his 85th birthday with a special screening of the 1931 movie there.  Our next stop was at Medtronic’s world headquarters where Earl still maintains an office even though he is nominally retired and lives in Hawaii. I got a kick out of seeing two Frankenstein figures on his desk.

Dr. Lillehei in surgery with Dr. Varco, 1954

Although my Places of Invention exhibition research has been focusing on the 1950s and 1960s and particularly this pacemaker invention story, I enjoy learning more about how Medical Alley, Minnesota has continued to grow and change as a hot spot for medical technology through today. Again, David proved to be an excellent guide, arranging a meeting with Dale Wahlstrom, President and CEO of LifeScience Alley (formerly Medical Alley, which merged with Minnesota’s Biotechnology Industry Organization in 2005), and his colleagues Liz Rammer and Ryan Baird, who shared information and insights into the “ecosystem” in Minnesota that continues to support and encourage invention and innovation. David also introduced me to Minnetronix staff, including President and CEO Rich Nazarian and Vice President for Corporate Affairs Jonathan Pierce, who were visiting The Bakken Museum that day, giving me the opportunity to ask them directly about what it is like living and working today in Medical Alley.

Bakken pacemaker courtesy of the Bakken Museum

A key message that came through loud and clear during my tour with David and talks with others is that the medical industry in the Twin Cities was and is a “tight-knit community” that combines the “delivery and technology sides” [2] of medical innovation. While I continue to study its history, I look forward to keeping an eye on the future of Medical Alley, Minnesota and seeing what amazing new technologies may emerge from this fascinating place of invention.

 

[1] Rhees, David, and Kirk Jeffrey. “Earl Bakken´s Little White Box: The Complex Meanings of the First Transistorized Pacing and Pacemaker.” In Exposing Electronics, edited by Bernard Finn. London: Harwood, 2000, p. 1.

[2] Quotes from Dale Wahlstrom, LifeScience Alley, and Rich Nazarian, Minnetronix, respectively (talks with Monica on 5/3/12)

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My Trip Behind the Scenes of the NMAH’s Hip-Hop Collection

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It’s always exciting going into the vaults of a museum’s collection. Ok, so actually they’re rarely “vaults,” but it’s still exciting to open collection cabinets and discover what objects may lie inside. On this particular occasion, National Museum of American History curator Eric Jentsch was showing me items in the Museum’s hip-hop collection. Although for several months I’ve been reading about hip-hop culture and technology, and looking at images related to it, this was my first opportunity to handle the objects themselves.

Afrika Bamabatta coat, front view, NMAH photo.

Eric opened up a cabinet and before me was an outfit worn by hip-hop advocate and community leader Afrika Bambaataa. Bambaataa was a pioneering hip-hop DJ known for playing obscure records, but his key contribution to the early hip-hop movement was bringing peace to a drug and gang riddled Bronx. He was a founding member of a gang in the Bronx River Projects but had a transformative experience when he visited Africa. He returned with a desire to provide his community with peaceful alternatives to gangs.  Bambaattaa turned his turf-building skills into peacemaking skills and used them while performing grassroots promotion for hip-hop parties. In the 1970s he formed first the Bronx River Organization and then the Universal Zulu Nation, an awareness group of reformed gang members who organized hip-hop parties for youth to provide peaceful and fun havens away from violence.

Afrika Bambaataa coat, back view, NMAH photo.

Despite having read all of this about Bambaataa I lacked a sense of what he was like in person. But by holding one of his jackets, I could better comprehend him. From the jacket’s size I got a better idea of how big he was. From seeing the outfit’s colors and examining the quality of its workmanship I got an idea of his taste. Taking it all in together I could picture him filling out the jacket and was better able to get a sense of what it would have been like to be in his presence.

Mixer donated by Grandmaster Flash, NMAH photo.

My visit to the collections also gave me information about the technological advances of hip-hop music. I have virtually no experience with sound mixing, so attempting to comprehend the evolution of mixing equipment from a record player to a mixing board has been a bit mind boggling. For example, DJ Grandmaster Flash invented a mixer from spare parts. According to him, “today you can buy turntables, needles and mixers that are equipped to do whatever. But at that particular time, I had to build it. I had to take microphone mixers and turn them into turntable mixers. I was taking speakers out of abandoned cars and using people’s thrown-away stereos.”

Once hip-hop became popular, the music industry took notice of the technologies artists invented to produce hip-hop’s sound. The Rane Corporation worked with Grandmaster Flash to develop a mixer that in Flash’s opinion, corrected the various problems he encountered as a DJ. The Rane mixer in the NMAH’s collection was donated by Flash. I was surprised by its appearance. Having read about the heavy use hip-hop equipment got, and how even after mixers no longer functioned they were re-purposed, this Rane mixer was in nearly mint condition. I expected something with heavy wear and tear and mis-matched parts. I was also surprised by its complexity. I didn’t think it would look so much like the mixers currently in use. Seeing this mixer designed (and donated) by Flash really impressed upon me how rapidly mixing technology improved.

I think that sometimes people undervalue doing research in museum collections, but it’s something that I have found useful in my research. At the very least, it’s exciting to handle objects used by the people you’ve been researching. I look forward to delving deeper into the Museum’s hip-hop collection as research for Places of Invention continues.

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