Skip to main content
  • Main menu
Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation
  • Home
  • Explore
    • Study
    • Try
    • About
    • Multimedia
  • Invention Stories
    • Blog
    • Places of Invention
    • Beyond Words
  • Diverse Voices: Immigrant Inventors
Detail of Eisler’s naturalization certificate

Masthead, Charles Eisler's Certificate of Naturalization, 1910, AC0734-0000007-01

Alexander Graham Bell seated at table, speaking into telephone while a group of men watch.

Diverse Voices: Immigrant Inventors

June 3, 2021 by Joyce Bedi

Immigrant inventors are essential to the invention landscape.

Twitter Facebook Tumblr Email Print

Did you know that Alexander Graham Bell was born in Scotland? He is only one example of a foreign-born inventor who sought opportunity in the United States. 

The contributions of immigrant inventors to the American economy and society as a whole are well-documented. In 2017, Harvard Business School scholars found that “technology areas where immigrant inventors were prevalent between 1880 and 1940 experienced more patenting and citations between 1940 and 2000.” Researchers at Stanford University published findings in 2018 showing that “immigrants account for 16% of all US inventors from 1976 through 2012.” They also noted that “immigrants account for about 23% of total innovation.” 

An Aspen Institute report in 2019 affirmed these scholars’ findings, stating that immigration “drives innovation. It offers businesses access to a larger, more diverse marketplace of human capital and talent, as well as to new ways of thinking and differing approaches to solving common problems. Innovation requires a risk-taking ecosystem, and many immigrants are by their very nature willing to take risks to change and improve their lives, having relocated to a foreign land often with no native language skills.”

The stories here—drawn from the collections of the National Museum of American History—attest to the  creativity and determination represented by diverse immigrant inventors over more than a century.

Throughout 2021, you can see many of the objects illustrated here in the Inventive Minds gallery in the Lemelson Hall of Invention, first floor, west wing, National Museum of American History.

  • Continue To ARGENTINA | Manoel de la Peña
  • Introduction
  • ARGENTINA | Manoel de la Peña
  • BELGIUM | Leo Baekeland
  • FRANCE | Michael Bouchet
  • GERMANY | Ralph Baer
  • GERMANY | Charles (Karl) Nessler
  • GERMANY | Charlotte Cramer Sachs
  • HUNGARY | Charles (Károlyi) Eisler
  • INDIA | Ashok Gadgil
  • IRELAND | David McConnell Smyth
  • MEXICO | Victor Ochoa
  • POLAND | Semi Joseph Begun
  • RUSSIA | Ida & William Rosenthal
  • SOUTH KOREA | InBae Yoon

Tags

  • Immigrant inventors (Relevance: 15%)
  • Women inventors (Relevance: 39%)

Related Stories

Illustration of a family playing Magnavox Odyssey games
Blog

50 Years at 16,000 Percent Annual Growth

Ralph Baer transformed interactive entertainment and gave rise to an industry that earned nearly $102 billion in revenue worldwide in 2015.

A young girl in traditional Hungarian dress looks at the camera over her shoulder while Charles Eisler at a podium introduces General Herbert Hargreaves during Eisler ambulance donation ceremony, Newark, New Jersey, 1943
Blog

Immigrant Inventors Giving Back

In the wake of war and revolution, Leo Baekeland and Charles Eisler served their communities.

Detail from seven groups of script characters, broken into groups A–G, show all of the characters in the Devanagari font
Blog

Devanagari Script for the Mergenthaler Linotype

Inventor Hari Govil worked with the Mergenthaler Linotype Company to design and perfect printing equipment for the Hindi language based on the Devanagari alphabet.

VIEW 2736 Matching Results

Found 2736 Stories

  • Agriculture and horticulture (Relevance: 5.1900584795322%)
  • Air and space (Relevance: 6.7616959064327%)
  • Archives@NMAH (Relevance: 8.406432748538%)
  • Chemistry (Relevance: 3.0701754385965%)
  • Food and drink (Relevance: 3.2894736842105%)
  • Industry and manufacturing (Relevance: 7.5292397660819%)
  • Medicine, health, and life sciences (Relevance: 4.5687134502924%)
  • Military technology (Relevance: 3.3260233918129%)
  • Mining and drilling (Relevance: 3.3991228070175%)
  • Patents and trademarks (Relevance: 11.330409356725%)
  • Photography, film, television, and video (Relevance: 3.874269005848%)
  • Power generation, motors, and engines (Relevance: 3.4356725146199%)
  • Spark!Lab (Relevance: 3.5818713450292%)
  • Textiles and clothing (Relevance: 3.3625730994152%)
  • Transportation (Relevance: 5.9576023391813%)
  • Women inventors (Relevance: 3.3991228070175%)
❯
Go to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History website

About Menu

▼
Open menu
▲
Close menu
  • Explore
    • Blog
    • Invention Stories
    • Places of Invention
    • Beyond Words
  • Study
    • Research Opportunities
    • Archives
    • Lemelson Center Books
    • Lemelson Center Research
    • Symposia & Conferences
  • Try
    • DO Try This at Home!
    • Spark!Lab
    • Spark!Lab Network
    • Encouraging Innovative Thinking
  • About
    • Events
    • Exhibitions
    • News
    • Who We Are
    • FAQ
    • Donate
  • Multimedia
  • Tags
  • Surprise Me
  • Search
  • Open Drawer
Copyright 2023, Smithsonian Institution, All Rights Reserved
  • DONATE
  • Terms of Use
  • Privacy Policy
Twitter Facebook Tumblr Email Print