Before we ventured out to the suburbs for our movie, we made a stop near us at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Museum. We tried to go in late February but the museum was closed for installation work.The museum was much smaller than I imagined. What I thought was the lobby was, in fact, the entire display. There were 50-60 inventions and their stories on display. Considering the millions of patents that have been issued, this is an incredibly small fraction. But, I think the way they presented the stories helped it from being overwhelming.
While I was looking for a picture of the building, I came across this reference on Wikipedia, which I had to post for my Dad: patent #5,443,036: "Method for exercising a cat" by having the cat chase a laser pointer. Sorry, Dad, I guess you weren't the first to try that one!
I didn't find a good picture of the building, but this photo was several places. The wall of pictures are famous inventor talking to each other about how they got their great ideas and giving inspirational "anyone can do it" sound bites. The middle pictures are Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. The upper right hand corner is Steve Wozniak whose original Apple II is on display.
