<p><span class="deck"> Samuel Colt’s life was brief but eventful. He was an imaginative inventor and an ambitious pitchman whose legacy included scandal and success—and firearms that were revolutionary in more ways than one</span> </p>
<p><span class="deck"> <span class="typestyle"> So Richmond proudly described its electric trolleys, the first truly successful system in the world</span> </span></p>
<p><span class="deck"> A careless America has lost or ignored most of its priceless collection of patent models. Sometimes exquisite,sometimes little more than toys, those that remain display in the inventors’ own handiwork the history of our technology</span> </p>
<p><span class="deck"> <span class="typestyle"> With a wave of his plastic wand Carl Fisher transformed a tangle of mangrove swamps into a peculiarly American resort</span> </span></p>
<p><span class="deck"> <span class="typestyle"> Once you’ve discovered fire, you have to keep it from burning you. This is how it was managed before the safety match.</span> </span></p>
<p><span class="deck"> THE BIRTH OF THE RAND CORPORATION <span class="typestyle"> During World War II, America discovered that scientists were needed to win it—and to win any future war. That’s why RAND came into being, the first think tank and the model for all the rest.</span> </span></p>
<p><span class="deck"> <span class="typestyle"> “A wound in the heart is mortal,” Hippocrates said two thousand years ago. Until very recently he was right.</span> </span></p>
<p><span class="deck"><span class="typestyle">On November 18, 1883, the nation finally settled on the method of synchronizing all clocks that we call standard time. Why did it take so long to figure that one out?</span> </span></p>
<p><span class="deck"><span class="typestyle">For years it was seen as the worst of times: bloated, crass, witlessly extravagant. But now scholars are beginning to find some of the era’s unexpected virtues</span>. </span></p>
<p><span class="deck"><span class="typestyle">American medicine in a crucial era was at once surprisingly similar and shockingly different from what we know today. You could get aspirin at the drugstore, and anesthesia during surgery. But you could also buy opium over the counter, and the surgery would be more likely to be performed in your kitchen than in a hospital.</span> </span></p>
<p><span class="deck">A man who has spent his life helping transform old photos from agreeable curiosities into a vital historical tool explains their magical power to bring the past into the present.</span></p>
<p><span class="deck">The urge to move documents as fast as possible has always been a national preoccupation because it has always been a necessity. Faxes and Federal Express are just the latest among many innovations for getting the message across.</span></p>
<p><span class="deck">For 200 years, the United States patent system has protected, enriched, and befuddled inventors. As a tool of corporate growth in a global economy, it is now more important than ever.</span></p>
<p><span class="deck">America looked good to a high school senior then, and that year looks wonderfully safe to us now, but it was a time of tumult, and there were plenty of shadows, along with the sunshine.</span></p>
<p><span class="deck">You’ve probably never heard of them, but these ten people changed your life. Each of them is a big reason why your world today is so different from anyone’s world in 1954.</span></p>
<p><span class="deck">Though it appears to have sprung up overnight, the inspiration of free-spirited hackers, it in fact was born in Defense Department Cold War projects of the 1950s.</span></p>
<p><span class="deck">In a nation of inventors, it has always been the single most invented thing. At this very moment, hundreds of Americans are busy obeying Emerson’s famous dictum, even though the machine he exhorted them to build has existed in near-transcendental perfection for almost a century.</span></p>
<p><span class="deck">The single best-selling American car isn’t a car at all. It’s a pickup truck. Here’s how it rose from farm hand to fashion accessory.</span></p>
