November 14-15, 2015: Crowd-sourced Inventors and Inventions

[This weekend marks the 250thbirthday of Robert Fulton, about whose influential invention I wrote in Friday’s post. All week I’ve AmericanStudied some of our most complex and significant inventors—and this crowd-sourced post is drawn from the inventive responses and thoughts of fellow AmericanStudiers. Add yours in comments, please!]Between my end-of-week travels to the Southern Historical Association conference (on which see next week’s series) and my start-of-week return from Disney World (on which see a future series), I didn’t have a chance to beat the bushes to get responses for this crowd-sourced post, I’m afraid. So I’ll just say two things:1)      If you want to see my thoughts on a different angle to and contemporary connection for these invention ideas, see this Talking Points Memo piece;2)      And please share your responses to the week’s posts, or any other thoughts on inventors and inventions (American or otherwise), in comments! Thanks!Next series starts Monday,BenPS. Other inventors or inventions you’d highlight?