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Feigenbaum Hall of Innovation

Innovations that originated in the Berkshires have had worldwide influence. Explore 3,000 square feet innovations and innovators that have enhanced people’s lives around the world. Experience innovations in science, technology, business, politics, culture, and the arts through original historical artifacts, works of art, video, and hands-on, interactive experiences for the whole family. Encounter the past, present, and future from telegraphs to blogs, from paper to plastics, from skiing to movie special effects in the Feigenbaum Hall of Innovation.
Made possible by the Feigenbaum Foundation.


Be an Innovator! Lots of interactive fun as you experience Innovation:

• Invent your own way to make chores easier and build a model.
• Solve puzzles and brain teasers
• Hunt for innovations of yesterday and today in “Williams Stanley’s study.”
• An innovative body-driven interactive installation, created for the Berkshire Museum by Sensing Places of Santa Monica, Calif., invites you to create dynamic visual poetry by dance moves. The technology, designed by Flavia Sparacino of Sensing Places, understands and interprets human body movements using cameras and computers, and uses this information to generate synchronized graphics on the fly. Your dance will be seen in real time on a projection wall and it is reinterpreted by the system as a visual DNA whose shape, color and complexity are modulated by the human body in motion.

Meet these Berkshire Innovators!

• Armand and Donald Feigenbaum
  Two brothers from Pittsfield develop a revolutionary system for managing quality control that makes quality everyone’s job. The Feigenbaums created a set of tools for implementing total quality in a variety of organizational settings, and have spent the last 40 years teaching managers around the world how to make them work.

SUCCESS

• Zenas Marshall Crane
  Fine paper making at Dalton’s Crane and Co. puts “safe” money in Americans’ pockets--and into the Berkshire economy.
  In 1801, Zenas Crane founded the first paper mill—and an enduring family business—in the Berkshires. Crane and Co. have produced all of the paper used to print U.S. currency since 1879. Their record of innovation began with the incorporation of silk threads into bank note paper.
  
  
• Tripod
  Young Williamstown entrepreneurs create a personal Web-publishing supernova.
  Tripod’s pioneering web site allowed individual users to post their own content, revolutionizing the role of the internet. Tripod opened the web to personalized, user-generated information, opening the door to a new generation of social networking and content sharing sites like MySpace and You Tube. “Blogs,” now a common feature of internet life, did not exist before Tripod cooked up this feature as a minor add-on to another project.
  
  
• Elizabeth Blodgett Hall
  A unique approach to education breaches the wall between high school and college in Great Barrington. Simon’s Rock established a new approach to secondary education for bright, motivated students. Elizabeth Blodgett Hall’s path breaking leadership created both the early college movement and a school that practiced what the movement preached.

OVERCOMING OBSTACLES

• Elizabeth Freeman and Theodore Sedgwick
  An enslaved African-American woman and a local attorney launch a decisive legal challenge to end Massachusetts slavery. Freeman’s lawsuit challenged Massachusetts slavery on new grounds that brought it to an end in 1781. Sedgwick argued on Freeman’s behalf that slavery was not allowed under the new Massachusetts Constitution of 1780. Their victory freed Massachusetts’ remaining slaves and wrote a new chapter in the struggle for civil rights in America.
  
  
• Cyrus Field
  A Berkshire businessman’s use of technology, sterling reputation, and relentless effort overcome a sea of troubles for the first transatlantic cable. Field’s first three attempts all failed when the cables either broke or burnt out. The ultimate success of the cable in 1866 revolutionized worldwide communications. The transatlantic cable slashed the time it took for messages to travel between the U.S. and Europe from several weeks to a few hours.
  
  
• Herman Melville
  In a landlocked second-floor study overlooking Mount Greylock, a Berkshire author spins America’s greatest tale of the sea and the soul. Moby Dick introduced two unforgettable characters into the annals of American fiction, and has captivated writes and readers for more than 150 years.

UNEXPECTED OUTCOMES

• Berkshire Plastics Industry
  Corporate innovation in the application of emerging plastics technologies brings hundreds of new products to the global marketplace. Berkshire plastics firms have developed hundreds of plastic-related patents and a continuing stream of new products. The impact of Berkshire plastics innovation can be seen in cell phones, iPods, CDs, home appliances, and countless other objects we use everyday.
  
  
• Ted Shawn
  A modern dance pioneer in Becket orchestrates a bold new symphony of male movement. Male dance hardly existed as an art form when Ted Shawn began dancing in 1911. By the early 1930s, when Shawn purchased Jacob’s Pillow and found the Men Dancers, he was single-handedly forging a new art form.
  
  
• Elkanah Watson
  A gentleman farmer in Pittsfield uses two sheep to revamp the region’s economy and launch a national movement. State and county fairs, a staple of rural life across the United States, owe their origins to Watson’s passion for agricultural improvement. The nation’s first agricultural fair happened in Pittsfield in 1810.

THE INNOVATION PROCESS

• Douglas Trumbull
  In his Berkshire studios, a cinematic special effects artist creates groundbreaking multimedia experiences. Trumbull’s imaginative visual technology has powered the quantum leap from motion pictures to multimedia experiences. He created the special effects for a parade of Hollywood successes: 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and Blade Runner, as well as Back to the Future—the Ride at Universal Studios.
  
  
• George Mowbray
  Finishing the Hoosac Tunnel becomes possible after a Berkshire engineer masters the use of a new explosive called nitroglycerin. Successful completion of the longest tunnel in North America demonstrated the value of dynamite—an engineering innovation.
  
• Frank Julian Sprague
  A North Adams high school grad makes the world go round by adapting safe electric motors to streetcars, elevators, and electric railways. Urban rail and trolley systems powered by Sprague’s motor redrew the map of American cities.

INSPIRATION

• William Stanley
  A Berkshire engineer develops a transformer that electrifies the world, beginning with Great Barrington’s Main Street. The AC transformer revolutionized the way electricity was generated and distributed, bringing electric power to millions of American homes.
  
  
• Shakers
  The members of a Berkshire-based religious community devise ingenious new ways to solve everyday problems.
  
• Nancy Graves
  Childhood visits to the Berkshire Museum shape an innovative artistic vision around science and natural history. Her 1969 solo exhibit at the Whitney Museum of American Art was the first such show for a female artist.

MOTIVATION

• W.E.B. Dubois
  A young man from Great Barrington becomes a brilliant scholar of African-American life and an activist who challenges racism and segregation. The co-founder of the NAACP changed the course of 20th-century race relations by challenging America to make good on its promises of equality and justice.
  
  
• Clare Bousquet
  Outdoor lights turn night into day and down time into dollars for a Pittsfield entrepreneur. The introduction of night skiing at the Bousquet area changed the way the world skis.
  
  
• Tom Patti
  A Pittsfield-born artist develops new technologies for working with architectural glass and aerospace materials that combine science and art. Patti’s fusion of artistic and technological innovation has created a world of new possibilities for artistry in glass.

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