Almost Forgotten Immigrant Inventors
An online, Virtual Exhibit
As a microcosm of America, Waltham has been for over two centuries and remains today home to numerous continuously evolving immigrant communities. This project is a way to validate and celebrate the risks immigrants take and recognize their legacies and the immense contributions they make to their communities and their adopted country by catalyzing waves of progress and renewal.
This exhibit is a collaborative project between the Waltham High School Changemaker Academy and the Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation. Students’ videos shared here represent a great deal of hard work developing skills in research, writing, and public speaking in an effort to learn, organize, and present information well enough to become educators themselves.
We encourage you to view these short videos and be educated, entertained, and inspired by the stories of these “almost forgotten immigrant inventors.”
José Hernández-Rebollar (1949-)
Born: Puebla, Mexico • Immigrated to the United States in 1998
“José Hernández-Rebollar is trying to revolutionize the way people communicate through ASL, from speaking, to writing, to signing, and much more. It's a crucial part of ‘living fuller lives.’ In the US alone, about 28 million people are hearing impaired”
Shuji Nakamura (1954-)
Born: Ehime, Japan • Immigrated to the United States in 1999
”Shuji Nakamura, the inventor of blue LEDs, a non-damaging and cost efficient alternative to other lights, changed the game for today’s technology everywhere. This creation brought a massive difference to computers and lighting alike; only for him to lose the patent and his credits in a lawsuit years later”
Luis von Ahn (1978-)
Born: Guatemala City, Guatemala • Immigrated to the United States in 1996
”Luis von Ahn once said in describing the success of his groundbreaking app, Duolingo, that ‘There are more people learning languages on Duolingo in the United States than across all U.S. high schools combined’”
Adolph Levitt (1883-1953)
Born: Bulgaria • Immigrated to the United States in 1916
“When was the last time you had a donut? Probably not that long ago. According to a survey conducted by Postmates Delivery Service, 96% of Americans like donuts. For this delicious and beloved breakfast food, you have one man to thank: Adolph Levitt, a Jewish refugee from an anti-semitic Russia, who invented the world’s first donut machine over 100 years ago.”
Hedy Lamarr (1914-2000)
Born: Vienna, Austria • Immigrated to the United States in the 1930s
“Think about all the ways you use online communication in your daily life.Some examples include texting, wi-fi, and bluetooth.… These have become essential in daily life. It’s how you communicate with relatives, play online games, lots of important work-related stuff, and a huge chunk of communication wouldn’t be the way it is without these very important things. Well, you wouldn’t have any of those things right now if it weren’t for one person.”
Miguel Angel Ondetti (1930-2004)
Born: Buenos Aires, Argentina • Immigrated to the United States in 1960
”Did you know that nearly half of adults in the United States suffer from hypertension? Today, many people take medication to control their high blood pressure and much of this is thanks to Miguel Angel Ondetti and his co-worker, who created Captopril, the first FDA-approved drug to establish an important key factor in hypertension. With that, Captopril unveiled a new field of medical research, known as ACE inhibitors.”
Dr. Elizabeth Stern (1915-1980)
Born: Cobalt, Canada • Immigrated to the United States in 1940
“Cancer has impacted us all. We all may know either family, friends, even celebrities who have had cancer. It is scary for everyone, and something no one wants to experience, or encounter in any way. One almost forgotten immigrant inventor named Elizabeth Stern spent her life trying to help find cures for cervical cancer and doing extensive research on the topic. Though Dr. Elizabeth Stern couldn’t exactly find a cure for this terrible disease, she did create something that could identify this type of cancer early on. In some cases prevent people from dying from it.”
Elijah McCoy (1844-1929)
Born: Colchester, Essex, Canada • Immigrated to the United States in 1847
“Trains used to take longer to get to places than they do today. That makes sense; all these years since their invention, surely they were improved as time went on. One such innovation was automatic lubrication engines. All steam engines need lubrication on their cylinders - the part of the steam engine that produced the power - to keep everything running smoothly. At first, people had to stop the train to apply the lubricant, which slows everything down. Several inventors rose to the challenge of creating devices to do this automatically, and one of them was Elijah McCoy.”
Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922)
Born: Edinburgh, United Kingdom • Immigrated to the United States in 1871
”Alexander Graham Bell is best known for inventing the telephone in 1876, but did you know that he also worked with deaf people? Which is kind of ironic that the person known for inventing one of the best tools for oral communication worked with people who couldn’t hear. Interesting isn’t it? Bell’s father, grandfather, and uncle had all been associated with speech and elocution, and both his mother and wife were deaf. This made him develop a passion for sound and hearing, which not only led him to his greatest invention - the telephone - but also led him to learn and teach a system developed by his father called ‘Visible Speech’ which is a set of symbols that represent speech sounds.”
Ralph Baer (1922-2014)
Born: Rodalben, Germany • Immigrated to the United States in 1938
“Ralph Baer was incredible. Some may even call him the ̈father of home video games. He once said, ‘if I learned anything from the army, it was about being able to get things done no matter how tough the assignment, and it served me later in life.’ He was the first man to make games for television, to think of the possibilities that he could do with the groundbreaking research that would lead to him making the ̈Brown Box. Many years later, after all his hard work, Ralph Baer understood that the games had to be fun or investors and consumers would not be interested”
Carl Djerassi (1923-2015)
Born: Vienna, Austria • Immigrated to the United States in 1939
”How did Carl Djerassi create the key ingredient to the birth control pill? Djerassi was called the father of the pill even though he was not the one who created it. There were many scientists working to create the chemicals, but Carl Djerassi found the key ingredient. With this discovery, he gave many women more freedom and power over their fertility.”
