The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has announced the opening of the National Inventors Hall of Fame in the museum of its Alexandria, Va., campus. The Hall of Fame honors and encourages the men and women responsible for the great technological advances that make human, social and economic progress possible. The Hall of Fame opening is being celebrated with a new exhibit about the inductees, “Inventive Links.”

The Hall of Fame was founded in 1973 by the USPTO and the National Council of Intellectual Property Law Associations with the induction of Thomas Edison as the first honoree. Each year, inductees are selected from a field of people nominated by peers and the public. Today there are 390 inventors who have been inducted into the Hall of Fame. Originally housed at the USPTO, the Hall outgrew its location and moved to Akron, Ohio where it opened to the public in 1995 and where it developed additional programs. The building in Akron closed last year for construction of the National Inventors Hall of Fame School…Center for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Learning which will open this fall. The organization’s headquarters, from where it administers its national programs, remain in Ohio.

“We are delighted that the National Inventors Hall of Fame has returned to its roots at the United States Patent and Trademark Office,” Acting Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO John Doll commented. “The journey to induction begins here with a patent, so it is only appropriate that those innovators who have truly transformed our lives should be honored at our headquarters.”