Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Patents

"Everything is awesome," Lego executives might as well be singing.

North America Is Crazy For Lego Toys and the Manufacturer Can’t Keep Up

The bricks keep kids and adults coming back for more

Chuck Taylor All Star, circa 1957

The Paris Olympics

How Chuck Taylor Taught America How to Play Basketball

A shoe-in for the first ever basketball game in the Olympics, Converse All Stars have a long history both in and out of sport

The Brain-Freezing Science of the Slurpee

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

Mary Kies' patented technique wove silk and straw together to make fetching bonnets like this 1815 specimen.

Cool Finds

Meet Mary Kies, America’s First Woman to Become a Patent Holder

Brains plus bonnets equal a historic first

Adriaen van de Venne engraved this early depiction of a Dutch telescope. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

10 Bizarre, Vision-Enhancing Technologies From the Last 1,000 Years

Before Oculus Rift, there were lorgnettes, TV glasses and eyborgs

Cool Finds

After 36 Years, Archivists Finally Found the Wright Brothers’ Airplane Patent

The missing patent was found safe and sound in a Kansas storage facility

Maya Varma won $150,000 as one of the first place winners in the prestigious Intel Science Talent Search competition.

How a High School Senior Won $150,000 By Inventing a $35 Medical Device

When Maya Varma learned an expensive diagnostic tool is rare in the developing world, she decided to build her own

Melt-Proof Chocolate, 3D Printed Gummies and Other Fascinating Candy Patents

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, a quick look at some of the world’s most fascinating confectionery innovations

A Detachable Airplane Cabin and Other Strange Aviation Ideas

A recently unveiled concept for a removable, parachute-equipped airplane cabin is only the latest in a long line of far-out designs

This Powerful Metal Glue Sets at Room Temperature

MesoGlue uses nanorod technology to fuse items together without heat, potentially replacing soldering

An 1877 mousetrap called “The Delusion.” Directions read “Put as large a piece of cheese you can crowd into the box…”

The Unceasing American Quest to Build a Better Mousetrap

There has always been some truth to the apocryphal Emerson quote

The Innovative Spirit

The Smithsonian’s Innovation Festival Demystifies the Invention Process

Inventors of a number of new technologies shared their stories at a two-day event at the National Museum of American History

The Innovative Spirit

Can You Guess the Invention Based on These Patent Illustrations?

Hint: They are all part of the National Museum of American History’s collection

The Innovative Spirit

The Smithsonian Spotlights American Invention at This Weekend’s Innovation Festival

Universities, federal agencies, companies and independent inventors will give visitors a glimpse of the future

The History of the Bar Code

Inventor Joe Woodland drew the first bar code in sand in Miami Beach, decades before technology could bring his vision to life

None

The Innovative Spirit

This Interactive Installation Rains a Poem Down on Viewers

Artists Camille Utterback and Romy Achituv wrote the software that drives an artwork, in which onlookers catch letters falling on a large screen

Peter Pidcoe (here) and Thubi Kolobe invented a Self-Initiated Prone Progressive Crawler, to help motor-challenged babies learn to inch themselves around.

The Innovative Spirit

This Skateboard-Like Device Helps At-Risk Infants Learn to Crawl

An innovative physical therapy device boosts babies’ movement efforts and helps their brains make critical connections

It took several weeks and a number of attempts before Shubham Banerjee built a working prototype of his Braille printer.

The Innovative Spirit

Meet the 13-Year-Old Who Invented a Low-Cost Braille Printer

One California teen has a vision to make Braille materials more widely available—and more affordable

The Innovative Spirit

17 Inventions That Could Make Going Back to School a Little Bit Easier

From an aromatic alarm clock to a school bus locator system, these patented products could help students and parents with the transition

None

The Innovative Spirit

Teenage Inventor Alexis Lewis Thinks That Kids Have the Solutions to the World’s Problems

With a patent to her name and more likely on the way, the 15-year-old has made it her mission to inspire young innovators

Page 12 of 13