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A stylized drawing of a compact fluorescent light bulb surrounded by a solid orange circle with a green border
Lemelson Center Research

2018 Lemelson Center Activities Report

The Lemelson Center had a dynamic 2018, featuring significant public engagement ranging from Draper Spark!Lab at the National Museum of American History to the expanding Spark!Lab network to invention and innovation festivals and our Innovative Lives program series.

Article from The Woman Inventor, 1890, titled “Colored Woman Inventor,” with the story of Ellen Eglin who invented a clothes-wringer but was afraid that white women would not buy the wringer if they knew it had been invented by an African American woman. Eglin sold her invention to an agent for $18 in 1888 and made no further profit from it.
Blog

Who Invents and Who Gets the Credit?

The complex story of an African American woman inventor, hidden behind a simple clothes wringer.

High jumper Dick Fosbury goes over the bar head first with his back to the bar.
Blog

Testing Exhibition Ideas about Sport and Invention

Innovation can take different forms when applied to the topic of sports, so we asked visitors what was most important to them.

A yellow comment card completed by an eight year old Spark Lab visitor. The card prompts the visitor to fill out responses to what they invented, what they learned, what they loved, and what they didn't like. This visitor invented a new kind of top, learned that when they spin something it stays up straight, they loved inventing it, and they didn't like all the work.
Blog

Evaluation in Spark!Lab

We iterate our process not just by doing the job, but also by improving how we do it each time.

Black-and-white head-and-shoulders photo of Robert Cade, wearing a jacket and tie. He holds a large can up to the camera. The can is labeled, “Stokely Van Camp’s Finest Gatorade for Active People.”
Blog

Sporting Invention: Applying the IPOP Framework

The Sporting Invention exhibition team is using the IPOP framework to test which Ideas, People, Objects, and Physical experiences might resonate with visitors.

The words Thanks for an amazingly inventive year! are visible on a projection screen.
Lemelson Center Research

2017 Lemelson Center Activities Report

The Lemelson Center had a remarkable 2017, with growth in research and education, and dynamic new public programming initiatives.

SparkLab facilitator Zach Etsch standing in SparkLab, wearing his yellow staff apron and a funny hat made from a propeller beanie and brightly-patterned paper cones over each ear.
Spark!Lab

Spark!Lab Staff Spotlight: Zach Etsch

Our veteran Spark!Lab Lead Facilitator loves to educate, engage, and empower our museum visitors.

Mary Kate Robbett at blackboard writing Can you Sketch an Invention?
Spark!Lab

Spark!Lab Staff Spotlight: Mary Kate Robbett

The most recent addition to the Spark!Lab crew, this former NMAH ambassador has already brought her enthusiasm and museum experience to thousands of young visitors.

Anna Mayfield
Spark!Lab

Spark!Lab Staff Spotlight: Antanesha Mayfield

This Spark!Lab veteran loves hearing about kids’ inventions almost as much as she loves her new baby girl.

Spark!Lab Lead Facilitator Natalia Febo
Spark!Lab

Spark!Lab Staff Spotlight: Natalia Febo

Even in her time away from the Smithsonian, this Lead Facilitator is a master maker.

Spark!Lab Floor Manager Jocelyn Knauf
Spark!Lab

Spark!Lab Staff Spotlight: Jocelyn Knauf

Although she doesn’t describe herself as ‘an inventor,’ Spark!Lab’s Floor Manager espouses the exhibit’s innovative spirit — in visitors’ lives and her own.

Chris Haslam skates the miniramp on a 1970s era board at Innoskate 2013 in DC.
Blog

Strategic Planning for an Innovative Organization

At the Lemelson Center, we try to live our mission by being innovative in our work. But how do you reconcile the strategic planning process with the sometimes-chaotic innovation process?

The three Smithsonian staffers who creatively rescued a lost cell phone.
Blog

Creative Problem Solving at Work

A visitor's "lost" cell phone leads to inventive problem solving at the Lemelson Center.

Spark!Lab

Spark!Lab Staff Spotlight: Laurel Miller

Spark!Lab’s Interpretive Exhibits Manager is all about cultivating innovation and creativity.

A group of children participate in a Spark!Lab activity on opening day
Spark!Lab

Why Do It?

Why do I love my job? I do it so that visitors, regardless of their path, can develop skills that drive them to be successful in their lives.

Spark!Lab

Roll Out the Old . . . Bring in the Sound!

As we ready Spark!Lab for its next theme, Things that Make Sound, I interviewed Interpretive Exhibits Coordinator Tim Pula about the process of developing new activities.

A case in the 1996 electric guitar exhibition
Places of Invention

Twenty Years of Exhibitions at the Lemelson Center

Having worked on Lemelson Center exhibitions for 20 years, I've learned a few things. What topic should we tackle next?

Spark!Lab

Full Color Sound

Can you hear color?

Invention Stories

And We Were There . . .

The Lemelson Center's first website premiered 20 years ago today.

Invention Stories

Send Me a Kiss by Wireless

In exchanging emoji's with my daughter, I'm part of a long history of communicating by wireless.

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