Oral & video history documentation

The Lemelson Center's oral and video history projects increase historical documentation on invention and innovation in the United States.
Above: Guitarist G.E. Smith is featured in the Electric Guitar Video Documentation Project. Smithsonian photo by Jeff Tinsley.

Full descriptions of the following collections may be found by searching the archives and manuscripts section of SIRIS, the Smithsonian Institution Research Information System. Unless otherwise noted, all collections are housed in the NMAH Archives Center. For further information, contact the Archives Center Reference Desk.

Oral & video history documentation is listed in alphabetical order by subject of interview. Date of interview is in parentheses.

Thomas Massie, inventor of a tactile interface for computers, and James McLurkin, inventor of robotic ants (1995) Video footage documenting the "Innovative Lives" program presented by Thomas H. Massie, inventor of the Phantom Haptic Interface, which gives computer users the ability to "touch" things that they see on the computer screen, and James McLurkin, inventor of microrobotic ants. Audience participation by students from Patricia Robert Harris Education Center in Washington, D.C., and the Ormond Stone Middle School in Centerville, Va. See related article »