Invention at Play

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• Learn more about childhood play, exploration, higher-order thinking, innovation, inventions, inventor, problem-solving, and social play.

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Invention at Play is a highly interactive, engaging, and surprising exhibition that focuses on the similarities between the ways children and adults play and the creative processes used by innovators in science and technology. It departs from traditional representations of inventors as extraordinary geniuses who are “not like us‚” to celebrate the creative skills and processes that are familiar and accessible to all people.

We are all too much inclined to walk through life with our eyes shut. There are things all around us, and right at our very feet, that we have never seen; because we have never really looked.

-- Alexander Graham Bell

Make it, make it better, and make it more efficiently: invention and innovation have played a central role in American history and economic growth. Americans hold in high esteem anyone who can figure out how to build a better mousetrap! But where does invention begin? Discovery, problem solving, and idea generation through play are the keys. Invention at Play, published by the National Museum of American History, provides a place to experience innovation and learn about invention.All work and no play? Check out the Invention Playhouse! Inventors reflecting on their childhood experiences cite mechanical tinkering, fiddling with construction toys, reflecting about nature, and drawing or engaging in visual modeling as the activities they credit for getting them to where they are today. This playhouse allows you to participate in a collaborative story, tinker with tubes and springs, try some tangrams and even put the cloud you imagine in the sky.What do you play with? The benefits of traditional play and playthings are a topic of great interest in this age of passive entertainment. Spatial understanding, experiential learning, and real-life problem solving critical skills, and ways of understanding the world are built into play. So what do these innovators play with? Discover inventors’ and scientists’ favorite childhood playthings and watch videos explaining the role of play on the Does Play Matter? page.Experience more Inventors’ Stories to learn what motivated these famous and not-so-famous people. From Bell, who maintained that an inventor “can no more help inventing than he can help thinking or breathing,” to others who invent to improve the efficiency of a product or the lives of people around them, creativity is linked to seeing things in a new way, releasing preconceived notions. Learn more about these inventors and their contributions as you examine their work and play.The Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation supports “innovative ways to record the past by preserving and increasing access to records and artifacts; broaden our understanding of history, through research, discussion, and dissemination of ideas; and look towards the future, by developing programs aimed at engaging young people in the study and exploration of invention and innovation.”