Facebook: Taking the boys for a half-term trip to Hidden Heroes: The Genius of Everyday Things at the Science Museum London. In the show thirty-six inventions are presented alongside original sketches and drawings by their inventors, patent specifications and original adverts revealing the efforts made to establish each product. It is produced in collaboration with the Vitra Design Museum…
Hidden Heroes is certainly worth visiting, not least with kids. It highlights innovations that are novel, are widely used, and have great utility and longevity, from air bubble film to the shipping container, the rubber band to the sticky note, Lego to the road reflector.
It shows the connections between those contributing to the inventions and how they built on or complemented one another, though it doesn’t do a good job of presenting the supporting material (drawings, patents, etc). Notable is how many inventions were made in more than one place at the same time – primarily the UK, USA and Germany – including the facial (paper) tissue, the light bulb (Swann and Edison) and vulcanisation of rubber (the rubber band was invented soon after).
More at: http://www.hidden-heroes.net/
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