Lesson Plan
Alabama Learning Exchange

Alex: American Inventors

For Teachers 3rd - 5th
Students will learn about 8 American inventors from the 1800's. They will use the internet of encyclopedia disc to research and print pictures and information about these people.
Handout
Smithsonian Institution

Smithsonian Education: Spotlight Biography Inventors

For Students 9th - 10th
This site provides information on American inventors Benjamin Franklin, Robert Fulton, Eli Whitney, Thomas Jefferson, Isaac Singer, Wilbur Wright, Thomas Alva Edison, Elias Howe, and Alexander Graham Bell. It offers pictures from and...
Activity
Smithsonian Institution

National Museum of American History: Things to Do at Home

For Students 9th - 10th
Families can come together through games designed to make history something fun and integral to family life. Build a sod house like prairie settlers did in the 1800s. Go back in time to visit five families that lived in the same house...
Handout
Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

Gilder Lehrman Institute: History Now: Technology of the 1800s

For Students 9th - 10th
[Free Registration/Login Required] Article considers the inventions and innovations in communication, transportation, and manufacturing that drove America forward in the nineteenth century. Includes a link to an interactive history of...
Handout
PBS

Pbs: American Experience: Forgotten Inventors

For Students 9th - 10th
Here is an accounting of a few inventions, most of which were invented in the 1800s, that often are overlooked. Find out about how the can opener was invented as well as that clothing staple, the denim jeans.
Handout
Other

American Artifacts: The Imaginative Inventor

For Students 9th - 10th
Just for fun. A website with a list of strange inventions by would-be entrepreneurs. Click on any to see a picture and description of the device.
Handout
PBS

American Experience: Technology Timeline: 1752 1990

For Students 9th - 10th
Short descriptions of important technological innovations produced in America and the date of their introduction.
Article
Siteseen

Siteseen: American Historama: Industrial Revolution Inventions

For Students 9th - 10th
The Industrial Revolution is a phrase that encompasses the massive changes in agriculture and manufacturing processes during the 18th and 19th centuries that transformed the United States from an agricultural to an industrial society....
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Louisiana Department of Education

Louisiana Doe: Louisiana Believes: Social Studies: Grade 4: Inventions and the Great Plains

For Teachers 4th
Read and study the sources about inventions from the late 1800s. As you read the three sources, think about the effects that the inventions had on the American economy.
Handout
Smithsonian Institution

Lemelson Center: Tracing the Roots of America's Motion Picture Industry

For Students 9th - 10th
In the late 1800's, Thomas Edison and his fellow inventors were key in the American film industry's boom.This web site provides a podcast and accompanying transcript tracing the roots of the film industry in America. Podcast [21:27]