National Inventors Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony
The 2011 Inductees join the past Inductees on stage
at the annual Induction Ceremony
Celebrating the spirit of innovation, the annual National Inventors Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony took place May 4 at the historic Patent Office building in Washington, DC, today home to the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery. Ten contemporary inventors were honored, along with a group of 29 historical inventors.
The work of this year’s Inductees is widespread and can be seen in inventions we use every day, including the digital camera, the barcode, technology that allows for secure communications over the Internet, kitchen cookware, and iconic colored crayons. Over 350 friends of Invent Now and the National Inventors Hall of Fame attended and 20 past Inductees were also on hand for the dinner and ceremony, emceed by NPR’s Neal Conan.
The 2011 Inductees are:
• George Devol, Industrial Robot
• Whitfield Diffie, Martin Hellman, and Ralph Merkle, Public Key Cryptography
• Eric Fossum, CMOS Active Pixel Sensor Camera-on-a-Chip
• Gary Michelson, Spinal Surgical Devices
• Steven Sasson, Digital Camera
• Esther Takeuchi, Lithium/Silver Vanadium Oxide Battery
• N. Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver, First Optically Scanned Barcode
For the complete list of Inductees honored posthumously, please click here.
The 2011 National Inventors Hall of Fame Inductee Book is now available for purchase online and features biographical overviews and patent information for the 460 inventors in the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
Thank you to our Induction Sponsors!
Presenting Sponsor
United States Patent and Trademark Office
Innovation Sponsor
Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation
Inductee Sponsors
Crayola
John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
Partner Sponsors
Accenture
Corning Incorporated
Thomas Fogarty Winery & Vineyards
IBM Corporation
University at Buffalo
Supporting Sponsors
3M
Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs
Banner & Witcoff, Ltd.
Lisle M. Buckingham Fund of Akron Community Foundation
Continental
Eastman Kodak Company
Fitch, Even, Tabin & Flannery
Greatbatch, Inc.
IPO Education Foundation
Amos E. Joel Young Inventors Endowment
Dr. & Mrs. Don and Ruth Keck
The Law Firm of Andrea Hence Evans, LLC
Leydig, Voit & Mayer, Ltd.
Pillsbury
Rambus Inc.
Patron Sponsors
American Intellectual Property Law Association
Dr. Jean Bailey
Bridgestone Americas, Inc.
Rob Briggs
Hattie Carwell
Kirkland & Ellis LLP
James E. Malackowski, Ocean Tomo
The Marconi Society
Old Trail School in honor of Esther Sans Takeuchi
Dana Perkins, PhD
Collegiate Inventors Competition:
2011 Entry Deadline is June 24!
There is still plenty of time to enter the 2011 Collegiate Inventors Competition! Thanks to the generous support of our sponsors, the Abbott Fund and the United States Patent and Trademark Office, students in graduate and undergraduate divisions, as well as their advisors, will be competing for over $75,000 in total cash prizes. All finalists in the Competition will receive an all-expenses paid trip to the final judging and awards ceremony in Washington, DC in fall 2011. These finalists will be judged by National Inventors Hall of Fame Inductees. Last year’s judges included Don Bateman (Ground Proximity Warning System), Ted Hoff (Microprocessor), Don Keck (Optical Fiber), Al Langer (Implantable Defibrillator), and Jim West (Electret Microphone).
The 2010 winning inventions included a better surgical drill for orthopedic surgery, a new way to sequence the genome in three dimensions, and a system for fabricating low-cost, low-weight, and high-strength communication towers out of composite fibers. The deadline for entering the 2011 Competition is June 24. Click here to download the official entry form, read the FAQs, and meet other past winners of the Competition. And check out our Facebook page too.
Camp Invention Celebrates 21 Years of Innovative and Fun STEM Learning
The Camp Invention program continues its 21st summer of innovation and fun with science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) learning through hands-on activities for elementary-aged children across the United States! More than 70,000 children in 49 states will participate in Camp Invention this summer, building upon the White House’s “Educate to Innovate” campaign to build a brighter future for our nation’s youth.
This year’s Camp Invention curricula include a new program, SPARK, where children learn about the concepts of biomimicry, chemistry, engineering, and inventing. Curricula include:
- Bounce! An Atomic Journey™, which allows children to explore the exciting world of atoms, molecules, mixtures, and compounds, discovering the science behind how balls move. They even create their very own bouncy balls to take home!
- W!LD: Wondrous Innovations and Living Designs™, which allows children to investigate the most innovative survival traits on the planet!
To find a Camp Invention program near you, visit CampInvention.org
National Inventors Hall of Fame School
In December 2010, Inductee Helen Free visited the NIHF School and spent time with fifth grade students to raise awareness about diabetes. Known for her work to create dip-and-read urine tests for detecting glucose levels, Free met with each fifth grade class to discuss diabetes, its symptoms, and its prevention. The fifth grade had been studying obesity, a leading cause of diabetes.
During each presentation, Free had students take part in a hands-on activity which allowed them to perform urinalysis of synthetic urine using dip-and-read reagent strips. In addition, the students were able to use a glucometer, a portable diagnostic device, to read glucose levels in samples of synthetic blood. During her visit, Free answered students’ questions and talked about her White House visit made a few weeks earlier, when she was awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation from President Obama.
Inventive Eats: Incredible Food Innovations
This summer plan a trip to visit the National Inventors Hall of Fame Museum and Store in Alexandria, VA and explore Inventive Eats: Incredible Food Innovations. The exhibit focuses on food-related inventions from breakfast cereals to Teflon-pan coatings and was recently featured on the MSNBC travel page.
Thank you, Camp Invention and
Club Invention Sponsors!
The Community Foundation of Lorain County
The Dow Chemical Foundation
The Dow Corning Foundation
Duke Energy
Ford Motor Company Fund
GAR Foundation
Intel Foundation
Betty V. and John M. Jacobson Foundation
The Jochum-Moll Foundation
Nordson Corporation Foundation
Stark Community Foundation
Time Warner Cable
II-VI Foundation
Inductee Nominations for Induction 2012
The Hall of Fame is looking ahead to 2012 and is currently welcoming nominations for the upcoming selection cycle. Any nomination submitted must include a U.S. patent number for the invention being cited. In addition, the nominee’s work must have a history of contributing to the nation’s welfare and have contributed to the progress of science and useful arts.
Nomination forms are available online, and questions or suggestions may be directed to nomination@invent.org.
Inductee News
The National Women’s Hall of Fame recently announced Helen Free as one of 11 women who will be inducted later this year. Women recognized by the organization must have made contributions of national or global importance and of enduring value. Free and her husband, the late Alfred Free, were inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2000 for their work at Miles Laboratories, later Bayer, introducing convenient dip-and-read urine tests to detect glucose, leading to additional efficient and easy self-tests.
Other National Inventors Hall of Fame Inductees recognized by the Women’s Hall of Fame include Gertrude Elion and Stephanie Kwolek.
In Memory
In recent months, six Inductees have passed away. Charles Kaman (1919-2011), a 2003 Inductee, died in January. Known for his innovations in helicopter development and manufacturing, Kaman’s many contributions include a servo-controlled rotor system and the gas turbine-powered helicopter. His work was conducted at the Kaman Corporation, and he also became known for creating the Ovation guitar and founding Fidelco Guide Dog Foundation.
The founder of the Digital Equipment Corporation, Ken Olsen (1926-2011) died in February. He was inducted in 1990 for his pioneering work with computers, including magnetic core memory and the first mass-produced minicomputer. For 35 years, he headed DEC as it introduced many breakthroughs to the computer industry.
In March, research chemist and Inductee Harry Coover (1917-2011) passed away. Inducted in 2004 for his discovery of cyanoacrylates, or superglue, Coover conducted his work at Eastman Kodak. His adhesive was first marketed under the name Eastman 910. Coover was especially proud of the use of cyanoacrylates during the Vietnam War, when field surgeons used it in spray form on potentially fatal wounds to stop bleeding instantly.
Paul Baran (1926-2011) also died in March. A 2007 Inductee, Baran developed digital packet switching, the fundamental concept behind today’s advanced communications networking systems. His work on this concept at RAND Corporation was intended to allow a communication network to survive a potential attack during the Cold War. Baran also served on the National Inventors Hall of Fame Board of Directors.
The discoverer of the hepatitis B virus, Baruch Blumberg (1925-2011) died in April. Subsequent to the discovery, and with the knowledge that the virus could cause liver cancer, Blumberg and fellow Inductee Irving Millman developed the hepatitis B vaccine, the first vaccine against a major form of cancer. Inducted in 1993, Blumberg received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work which was conducted at the Fox Chase Cancer Center.
Willard Boyle (1924-2011), who died in May, was inducted in 2006 with George Smith for their invention at Bell Labs of the charge-coupled device (CCD), the device that enabled dramatic advances in digital imaging technology. CCDs are found in most imaging technologies, from space telescopes to digital cameras to scanners. In 2009, Boyle and Smith were the recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physics.
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