Not surprisingly, American publications have focused on American inventors and invention. In The Truth about Tesla: The Myth of the Lone Genius in the History of Innovation Christopher Cooper looks at Serbian American inventor Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), in particular as he has been understood as the lone inventor of technologies that in fact others had also been developing. In challenging the myth of the lone inventor working in a vacuum, Cooper stresses the importance of patent case testimony and other contemporaneous literature in verification.
In The Tinkerers: The Amateurs, DIYers, and Inventors Who Make America Great, Alec Foege examines the evidence of what he terms the “tinkering spirit” of individuals such as Thomas Edison and businesses/organizations such as PARC.3 Mark Hatch’s The Maker Movement Manifesto: Rules for Innovation in the New World of Crafters, Hackers, and Tinkerers followed soon thereafter. Hatch looks at the more recent phenomenon of do-it-yourself makerspaces.
The catalogue for the National Museum of American History’s exhibition of the same name, Places of Invention, edited by Arthur Molella and Anna Karvellas, details inventions ranging from machine tools and small arms in 1800s Connecticut to clean energy innovation in the 2010s at Colorado State University’s Engines and Energy Conversion Lab.4 Susan Branson’s thesis in Scientific Americans: Invention, Technology, and National identity is that ingenuity and invention helped provide an identity for the young United States, further distinguishing it from Great Britain. She also explores societal and institutional barriers to women’s intellectual pursuits.
In his biography Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller, Alec Nevala-Lee presents Fuller as a Renaissance man of the 20th century. The author provides many details about not only Fuller’s most notable creation, the geodesic dome, and his infamous automobiles, but also his work in education and his ideas for distance education and remote work. Like later entrepreneurs who held Fuller’s work in high regard, such as Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs, Fuller had self-determination and a knack for connecting with his notable contemporaries—among them authors, artists, and dignitaries—and these individuals promoted his work and furthered his success.
Craig Roach’s Simply Electrifying: The Technology that Transformed the World, from Benjamin Franklin to Elon Musk provides a history of electricity and electrical power in the United States—both its discovery and its innovators. Roach is selective in choosing technologies and individuals to discuss, but his broad coverage ranges from natural gas fracking, government regulation, and sponsorship of renewable power to Elon Musk and Tesla Motors, SolarCity, and SpaceX.
3. Established in the 1970s as a division of Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) became an independent entity (under the umbrella of Xerox) in 2002, and in 2023 Xerox donated PARC (its lab and assets) to SRI International.
4. Places of Invention also includes a section about the development of hip-hop music in 1970s Bronx, New York.
The Maker Movement Manifesto: Rules for Innovation in the New World of Crafters, Hackers, and Tinkerers by 
