Human beings are perpetually brainstorming better ways to build a mousetrap. But there is something particularly American about celebrating ingenuity. We transform our inventors—from Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell to Steve Jobs—into celebrities. What are the characteristics that define American ingenuity? How has this country inspired generations of creators and innovators? Winners of the 2015 Smithsonian Ingenuity Awards Alan Stern, principal investigator of NASA’s New Horizons mission, Zoe Crosher, co-curator of The Manifest Destiny Billboard Project, Harvard Alzheimer’s researcher Doo Yeon Kim, and Francoise Mouly, art editor at The New Yorker will discuss America’s peculiar mix of creativity and pragmatism.
Photo courtesy of ClearAction.
The Takeaway
Openness Is the Mother of Invention
In America, Curiosity Is Often the Only Qualification You Need
From the light bulb to the iPhone, America has a long history of revolutionary inventions. So what does this ingenuity spring from? What are the conditions that allow for our …