In the early 1960s, the Chicago firm of Playskool introduced this educational toy for children three to six years old, seeking to give them an early familiarity with numbers. It has two rows of relatively large rotating wooden rectangular blocks, each with a row of square rotating wooden blocks belo

This website, from the Library of Congress, was designed especially with young people in mind, but there are great stories and information for people of all ages. Through the use of short essays, biographies, interactive games and activities, students can explore every era of  American histo

This downloadable, annotated bibliography accompanies the online exhibition, Separate is Not Equal: Brown v. Board of Education. It includes links to online teacher materials and age appropriate works of fiction and n

The Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños is a research center dedicated to the study and interpretation of the Puerto Rican experience in the United States. Operating out of Hunter College, the City University of New York, the Centro is committed to making their research available and useful to th

A core component of the California Digital Library, the Online Archive of California (OAC) is a digital information resource that facilitates and provides access to materials such as manuscripts, photographs, and works of art held in libraries, museums, archives, and other institutions across Cal

During the colonial period, cattle horns were used by woodsmen and by soldiers for storing gunpowder in a safe, dry place. The horns also became decorative objects as they were personalized by the owner. Makers carved names, initials, dates, flags, battles, and even full maps on the exterior of t

Prototype Online: Inventive Voices is a podcast series from the Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center that reveals the stories behind the invention—motivations, successes, and disappointments—and highlights the persevering spirit shared by all who call themselves “inventor.”

Motorola produced the DynaTAC cell phone in 1984 after more than a decade of work in cellular research and technology. The Motorola DynaTAC (an abbreviation of Dynamic Adaptive Total Area Coverage) was the first commercially available portable handheld cell phone. The phone was a 9-inches tall, w

This is a set of eight "dropping sticks" used to teach acoustics. It was made in Paris by the famous scientific instrument maker Rudolph Koenig, sometime between 1858 and 1902. This particular set was used in the introductory physics class of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute. These s

The mission of the Asian American Curriculum Project is to educate the public about the great diversity of the Asian American experience by distributing books that foster cultural awareness and to educate Asian Americans about their own heritage. AACP believes that the knowledge which comes from