The Hagley Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society presents
AUTHOR TALK: ERIC S. HINTZ

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2021 AT 7:00 P.M.

In person at the Hagley Center
The program will also be live streamed on Haley’s YouTube channel

During the nineteenth century, heroic individual inventors such as Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell created entirely new industries while achieving widespread fame. However, by 1927, a New York Times editorial suggested that teams of corporate scientists at General Electric, AT&T, and DuPont had replaced the solitary “garret inventor” as the wellspring of invention. But these inventors never disappeared. In this talk, Eric Hintz (Lemelson Center, Smithsonian Institution) will argue that lesser-known inventors such as Chester Carlson (Xerox photocopier), Samuel Ruben (Duracell batteries), and Earl Tupper (Tupperware) continued to develop important technologies throughout the twentieth century. Moreover, Hintz explains how independent inventors gradually fell from public view as corporate brands increasingly became associated with high-tech innovation. The independents enjoyed a resurgence, however, at the turn of the twenty-first century, as Apple’s Steve Jobs and Shark Tank’s Lori Greiner heralded a new generation of heroic inventor-entrepreneurs. By recovering the stories of a group once considered extinct, Hintz will show that independent inventors have long been—and remain—an important source of new technologies.

Registration of Eric Hintz’s talk is exclusively available through Eventbrite at  https://hintz.eventbrite.com
It will be live streamed from Hagley’s YouTube channel. Register at the link above to view the program.

View this link for other Hagley programs.
https://www.youtube.com/c/HagleyMuseumandLibrary