If you don't know that the incandescent light was a failure before it was a success, it's easy to write off some modern energy innovations like solar panels because they haven't hit the big time fast enough. Worse, the fairy-tale view of...

Travel back in time to find out when everyday items such as a computer, radio, or telephone first appeared in homes. You can also connect to links about the people who invented these items.

This site chronicles the father of wireless communication. Examines his life and how his accomplishments affected both society and warfare.

Families can come together through games designed to make history something fun and integral to family life. Build a sod house like prairie settlers did in the 1800s. Go back in time to visit five families that lived in the same house...

Biographical look at Thomas Edison from the museum of his birthplace. Provides information on his life and his inventions. Also gives a tour of Edison's birthplace.

Learn about the life and contributions of Benjamin Franklin by examining his letters, books, cartoons, speeches, and manuscripts. An excellent resource for teaching and learning about the history of the United States using primary source...

The Franklin Institute looks at the invention of the Brownie camera, which helped put photography into the hands of amateurs and allowed the middle class to take their own snapshots as well in the early 20th century.

At this site from Enchanted Learning, you can learn all about China, view a map, and try some of the activities provided. Activities include printing out China's map and coloring it and learning Chinese numbers from 1 to 10.

Evidently, this is not an easy question to answer! The television seems to be the international product of a series of discoveries and inventions. Here is an interesting summary of inventors and events leading up to the actual television...

This is a detailed biography about George Westinghouse with a link to an article about Westinghouse from the Wilmerding News, 1904. Read about his many inventions that improved railroad safety.

Resource provides biographical material of the famous inventor, George Washington Carver. Content includes links to places for further information, timeline, as well as fun facts about this man.

At the HubbleSite you can learn about Lyman Spitzer's (1914?1997 CE) inventions and accomplishments in the science field.

A compilation of symposium papers that have been presented on the Wright Brothers which includes details about their lives, invention, and historic flight.

Useful biographical information, inventions, and interesting facts about German-born physicist, Albert Einstein, known for developing the theory of relativity.

An excellent article about inventor Garrett Morgan including information about his two life-saving inventions: the Safety Hood, an early gas mask, and the traffic light.

Inventor Nikola Tesla is the subject of this extensive PBS site. In addition to information on Tesla's life and work, the site offers insight into the ways in which society and invention affect each other.

A biography of the man who invented the elevator.

Young scholars investigate the importance of failure to the process of innovation by investigating several items that were invented by accident. They share one "failure to success" story by creating a 3-panel comic strip poster, and then...

Take a virtual tour of the Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking, and learn about the history of writing in ancient civilizations, the invention of paper, the spread to Europe, the impact it had, how paper is made, the evolution of...

Doing a report? Want to figure out how the web works? Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor and creator of the World Wide Web, offers answers to some frequently asked questions about himself and his invention.

An in-depth biography of inventor Nikola Tesla. Discusses his many inventions, his troubles with obsessive-compulsive disorder, and information on his multitude of patents.

The life and work of James Hargreaves, the inventor of the spinning jenny that revolutionized the English textile industry and brought on the Industrial Revolution.

Biographical and scientific information about discoveries and technological advances credited to ten Scots, Lord Kelvin (Kelvin scale), Alexander Graham Bell (telephone), James Watt (steam engine), and Alexander Fleming (penicillin),...

Here is a very detailed biography of Thomas Edison ranging from his boyhood and his work as a telegrapher, moving on to his invention of the phonograph and incandescent light bulb, and finally, a description of his laboratories where he...