Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Innovation

A burn patient uses VR.

Instead of Painkillers, Some Doctors Are Prescribing Virtual Reality

Virtual reality therapy may be medicine’s newest frontier, as VR devices become better and cheaper

"Fading Thoughts" by Andrew Myers

Please Touch the Art: This Artist Creates Tactile Portraits for the Blind

Andrew Myers uses screws to make 3-D masterpieces for curious fingers

David Amster-Olszewski, founder of SunShare, at one of the "solar gardens" his company built in Colorado

Future of Energy

Meet Eight Young Energy Innovators With Ingenious Ideas

From community “solar gardens” to energy pellets made from coffee grounds to a phone-charging device that you plug into soil

Rio's favelas, like Santa Marta (shown here), are no longer blank spaces on Google Maps.

Mapping Rio’s Favelas

Ahead of the Olympics, Google and a Brazilian nonprofit have been recruiting locals to pinpoint businesses and other landmarks in the city’s shantytowns

The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

Manufacturers have made it increasingly difficult for individuals or independent repair people to fix electronics. A growing movement is fighting back

The Brain-Freezing Science of the Slurpee

More than 60 years ago, a broken soda fountain led to this cool invention

The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History holds this patent model for a Gorrie ice machine, the first mechanical refrigeration or ice-making machine the U.S. Patent Office patented.

Six of History’s Smartest, Weirdest and Most Interesting Inventions for Beating the Heat

From a bicycle mister to ice energy, here are a few innovative ways for cooling down

Kevin Kelly unpacks 12 technological forces in his new book.

Wired Founder Kevin Kelly On the Technologies That Will Dominate Our Future

The optimistic futurist says we’ll share more, own less and spend far more time on our devices

The FarmBot Genesis Brings Precision Agriculture to Your Own Backyard

Developed by a team from California, this machine plants seeds, pulls weeds and waters plants individually

Future of Energy

One Step Closer to Turning Plastics Into Fuel

Researchers in California and China have discovered a new method for breaking polyethylene into liquid fuel and solid wax

How Real-time Translation Apps and Online Tools Are Helping Refugees in Turkey Forge New Lives

Refugees and the technology of exile

A schematic design of the upcoming “Icebergs” installation for the National Building Museum

Age of Humans

A Maze of Palatial Icebergs Has Floated Into a Washington, D.C. Museum

The new exhibition touches on design, landscape architecture, the life of icebergs and climate change

A 1959 exhibition of the first video game "Tennis For Two," designed physicist William Higinbotham at Brookhaven National Laboratory in 1958.

The Innovative Spirit fy17

The Pioneers of Video Game Technology Are About to Become the Stuff of History

The American History Museum’s Lemelson Center will record 20 oral histories from early video game innovators

Why People Abandon High-Tech Prosthetics

That Luke Skywalker prosthetic arm may strike the average user as less than sensational

Treating 5-year-old Barbara Bowles required doctors who were “on a mission, looking for something brand-new.”

Childhood Leukemia Was Practically Untreatable Until Dr. Don Pinkel and St. Jude Hospital Found a Cure

A half century ago, a young doctor took on a deadly form of cancer—and the scientific establishment

Wayfair's app lets you see how their products will look in your house.

How Augmented Reality Will Change How You Buy Furniture

Thanks to a new Google 3D technology named Tango, mobile devices will be able to insert virtual images into a real place

A map shows the distribution of the slave population in the Southern states of the United States, based on the 1860 census.

History of Now

The Surprising History of the Infographic

Early iterations saved soldiers’ lives, debunked myths about slavery and helped Americans settle the frontier

Future of Energy

A Canadian Company’s Quest To Turn Air Pollution Into Fuel

Startup Carbon Engineering has opened a prototype plant in Squamish, British Columbia, that captures carbon dioxide emissions

Page 89 of 155