From safety pins to 3-D printers, inventions from a ‘Nation of Dreamers, Immigrants, and Tinkerers’

With our divisive presidential election just days away, historian Kevin Baker reminds us of the innovation and tenacity that made our nation great in “America the Ingenious: How a Nation of Dreamers, Immigrants, and Tinkerers Changed the World.”

More than 100 black-and-white illustrations by Chris Dent accompany Baker’s text. From the prairie schooners and cotton mills of the 1700s to the 3-D printing and cyborgs of our Information Age, the book (Artisan, $29.95) reveals little-known anecdotes and quirky stories of the eccentric and often egotistical personalities behind the inventions. Leo Fender, known for the electric guitar, couldn’t play a note of music. The creator of the safety pin, prolific inventor Walter Hunt, sold his patent to cover a $15 gambling debt.

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One of the biggest game changers was the Erie Canal, built in 1825 thanks to the vision of New York Gov. DeWitt Clinton, who got the idea from a bankrupt flour merchant. “He saw the potential of New York to be a great city even when it was little more than a pestilential muddle at the toe of Manhattan,” Baker writes. “He’s the most famous person no one has ever heard of.”

Of the 76 inventions in the book, at least 65 were created by immigrants and 15 involved children of immigrants, Baker says. He notes the Scottish-born Alexander Graham Bell and the thousands of Chinese American laborers who built the transcontinental railroad.

London was first to go underground with its Tuppenny Tube in 1863, but trains pulled by steam locomotives spewed smoke and soot into the tunnels. American Frank Sprague came up with the idea for the first practical direct-current electric motor to run underground trains, eliminating the smoke and cinder problem.

Baker includes non-physical innovations such as jazz and the blues along with other pieces of Americana: Levi Strauss’ jeans, athletic shoes, amusement parks and lavish movie palaces. “It’s a very optimistic book,” Baker said, “in what has become an overly pessimistic time.”

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