American Inventions Subscription (Preorder Now – Ships November 15)

American Inventions is a six-part series telling the story of American innovation through the actual documents behind some remarkable breakthroughs.

Each installment centers on a patent or other primary source and tells the story behind it: the inventor, the problem, the breakthrough, and what happened next.

The series runs from the mid-1800s through World War II and includes Alexander Graham Bell's telephone, Thomas Edison's electric light, Josephine Cochran's dishwasher, the Wright brothers' flying machine, and Hedy Lamarr's secret communication system. It also includes a fascinating and little-known episode from patent history: an 1858 Attorney General opinion addressing whether an enslaved inventor could receive a U.S. patent.

THE BIG IDEA

Before it changed the world, it was an idea on paper.

We know these inventions by what they eventually became. But there's something fascinating about going back to the beginning and seeing the original drawings, diagrams, patents, advertisements, and documents from when these technologies were still new.

And behind each invention is a great story.

Josephine Cochran turned a problem with broken dishes into a machine and eventually a successful business. The Wright brothers weren't simply trying to get a machine into the air—they had to solve the problem of controlling it once it was there. Hedy Lamarr, famous as a Hollywood actress, co-invented an ingenious wartime communication system. Bell and Edison helped transform how people communicated and lived. And the 1858 patent opinion gives us a fascinating window into how the patent system itself worked at the time.