National Inventors Hall of Fame

As of 2020, 603 inventors have been inducted, mostly constituting historic persons from the past three centuries, but including about 100 living inductees. Nominees must hold a U.S. patent of significant contribution to the U.S. welfare, and which advances science and useful arts. The 2020 class included 22 inventors.

History

The National Inventors Hall of Fame was founded in 1973 on the initiative of H. Hume Mathews, then the chairman of the National Council of Patent Law Associations (now the National Council of Intellectual Property Law Associations). It was launched by Ed Sobey, who was also the first director. In 1974, it gained a major sponsor in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office from Washington, D.C.

At first, the Hall was housed in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in Washington, D.C., near the Washington National Airport but it soon needed more room at a more prominent location. A committee was formed in 1986 to find a new home for it. For a time, the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was the frontrunner. But in 1987, a patent attorney from Akron, Edwin "Ned" Oldham, the representative from the National Council of Patent Law Associations, led the drive to move the Hall to Akron. According to Maurice H. Klitzman, one of the founding members of the Board of Directors, because of the guaranteed financial support by the city of Akron that greatly exceeded any other community's proposal, the Board selected Akron as the new home. The construction of the new building was finished in 1995 and the Hall opened to the public with the name of the Inventure Place.

From the beginning, the Inventure Place was intended to be more than a science and technology museum and library. It was designed to double as an inventor's workshop and a national resource center for creativity. Designed by an architect from New York City, James Stewart Polshek, it was a stainless-steel building, shaped like a curving row of white sails, with five tiers of exhibits. One of the exhibits allowed the visitors to use computer programs for making animations and mechanisms for running laser-light shows.

But attendance did not meet the expectations and the museum never made a profit, although its related ventures and programs, such as Invent Now and Camp Invention, proved to be more successful. In 2002, its name was changed to the National Inventors Hall of Fame Museum. Six years later the Hall moved to Alexandria. Its former facility was converted to a specialty school for students in grades between 5th and 8th. It is now the National Inventors Hall of Fame STEM Middle School, a middle school for the Akron Public Schools.