Braceros, with some in a crowd and others in line, wait at the Monterrey Processing Center, Mexico.

Amber Melton made this robot at CompSciConnect, a University of Maryland camp. When few girls signed up for the university’s computer science classes, Dr. Jan Plane realized that something in the high schools wasn’t working. So she created a camp for middle schoolers to excite them about compute

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

Printed in Morse code and transcribed by Samuel Morse himself, this message was transmitted from Baltimore to Washington, D.C., over the nation's first long-distance telegraph line.

Blue wool uniform coat, gold-colored buttons on jacket front and sleeves. Epaulettes and gold trim at neck and cuffs. This coat adheres to the 1813 uniform regulations; single-breasted, of dark blue wool, four buttons placed lengthwise on the sleeves and skirts. A gold star is embr

A skateboarding pioneer, Cindy Whitehead turned pro at seventeen, skating both pool and half-pipe and becoming one of the top-ranked vert skaters while competing against the boys. But Whitehead had no choice but to wear boys’ shorts when competing; there were no skate products for girls in the 197

Model 1910 first-aid pouch designed to be worn on the soldier's utility belt.

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.”

As the “Millennium Bug” gained media attention, some businesses used the hype to market special millennium foods. From cars to breakfast cereal, companies like the Figueroa Brothers, Inc., cashed in on the Y2K name. This bottle once contained Y2K Millennium Meltdown ¿R-U-Ready? hot sauce, a

The monarch butterfly wings have morphed into a well-recognized symbol of the immigrant rights movement in less than a decade. Just as a monarch butterfly migrates across North America to find refuge (to from harsh weather), so do humans to find a better living situation. Popularized by Culture Stri