Exhibitions Home | Current | Upcoming | Past | Virtual

Lemelson Center: The Inventive Side of Nobel

December 14, 2003 - January 12, 2004

Museum: American History Museum

Location: 1st Floor, West Wing, Lemelson Center Cases

These 2 cases explore the everyday inventions that have resulted from the Nobel-winning research of scientists Guglielmo Marconi, whose ground-breaking experiments in radio earned him the 1909 prize in physics, and William Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter Brattain (physics, 1956), whose work on transistors transformed consumer electronics.

Artifcacts include:

• a 1918 amateur crystal radio set ? a Zenith transistorized hearing aid from the 1950s
• a 1958 transistorized implantable cardiac pacemaker
• A video kiosk provides a glimpse behind the scenes of transistor manufacture and applications.
• Two graphic panels spotlight the inventive careers of Alfred Nobel, inventor of dynamite, and Jack Kilby, who was recognized with the 2000 Nobel Prize in physics for his part in the invention of the integrated circuit.