Let’s imagine you lived in a city that had given the world the telephone, the microwave oven, surgical anesthesia, the sewing machine, and the radar technology that helped the Allies win World War II.
And the Apollo spacecraft’s guidance computer, the first venture capital firm, the first commercially successful home robot, the first e-mail message, the video game, COVID-19 vaccine maker Moderna, and frozen orange juice.
That’s just a dozen of the more notable innovations hatched in Greater Boston over the past two centuries.
Unfortunately, we’ve done little to highlight those achievements. A tourist can spend a long summer weekend doing the top three things TripAdvisor recommends (Fenway Park, the Freedom Trail, and the Museum of Fine Arts) and not scratch the surface of Boston’s scientific and technological contributions to the modern world.
How might we change that?
I’d love to ensure that people think not just of the American Revolution, the Red Sox, and college tours when they come to town, but also understand this is a place that has been working at the edge of what is possible at least since 1846, when doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital helped demonstrate that the chemical ether could put a patient under before surgery.
I’ve suggested in the past that we create an Innovation Trail in Boston and Cambridge, and have put together a list of 21 sites to give a sense of just how much we have to choose from. (I also built a companion Google Map.)
A few years ago, the nonprofit History Cambridge created a digital map of 30 innovations hatched in that city. Perhaps the highest-profile effort has been a display wall at Logan Airport, between terminals C and E, that showcases important breakthroughs like the first human organ transplant, Edwin Land’s pioneering work on instant photography, and the development of Marshmallow Fluff.
That last installation was a project of the Massachusetts Port Authority. And other organizations — including the MIT Museum, Broad Institute, Museum of Science, Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation, and Paul S. Russell Museum of Medical History and Innovation, at Mass. General — have done good work to spotlight elements of Boston’s innovation heritage. But we lack a front door, an organized tour, a way to present the story in a coherent way that visitors can experience.
On the Innovation Trail, you could tell the story of how a “foundational layer” of great educational institutions such as Harvard, Tufts, and Boston University attracted smart students and professors from all over the world and set up labs where they could tackle hard problems; how the breakthroughs from those labs were sometimes patented and set up as businesses; and how funding mechanisms like venture capital emerged to give those businesses the money they needed to perfect a product and get it to market.
But not every discovery is about capitalism and cashing in; often, scientific publications simply spread insights about the mechanics of a deadly disease, for example, that help advance progress at dozens of other academic institutions and for-profit companies.
The Innovation Trail could start near Park Street, with the story of Alexander Graham Bell and Lewis Latimer, a Black draftsman born in Chelsea who created the drawings that helped Bell secure a patent for his telephone ahead of others working on similar technology; today, there are more phones than people in the world. Perhaps it ends on the campus of Harvard with the creation of Facebook, which, with nearly 3 billion active users, is the biggest social network we’ve yet seen.
Or it could start in the North End, where an enslaved man named Onesimus once lived in Cotton Mather’s household. In Africa, Onesimus had been inoculated against smallpox, and his explanation of the practice led to one of the first quantitative medical trials ever conducted, amidst a smallpox epidemic in the early 1700s. It might end at the Kendall Square headquarters of Moderna, a company that developed one of the first effective vaccines using messenger RNA technology to help bring the COVID-19 pandemic under control.
An Innovation Trail could use digital displays, projections on the sidewalk, QR codes and a mobile app, or old-fashioned signage. But let’s make sure it’s hard to miss, even if you accidentally stumble onto one of the stops.
When I reached out to folks at the Cambridge Historical Commission, History Cambridge, and the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, everyone thought we should do more to highlight Boston’s scientific and technological contributions. Unfortunately, it just isn’t a priority for any of them.
My friend and occasional collaborator Bob Krim, coauthor of the new book “Boston Made,” was also bullish. But he noted that there wasn’t enough financial support from the business community to sustain a nonprofit he started in 1997, the Boston History & Innovation Collaborative; while it did lots to spotlight local innovation, from bus tours to gala dinners, it went dark in 2010.
We need someone to convene and lead these groups to accomplish something bigger than they’ve been able to do alone.
What’s the point in doing this?
It’s not just about thumping our chests and saying, “We’re number one when it comes to big ideas.” (Annoying, even if true.) An Innovation Trail could spur discussion about the importance of science, math, and engineering education; the role the federal government has played in funding important research; the ways that new technologies change the way we work and interact; the ethical issues surrounding cutting-edge science like gene editing and artificial intelligence; and the way the physical design of cities and buildings fosters innovation.
In Boston, if you don’t knock something down, you’ll watch it be transformed from a 1920s-era candy factory to a 21st century pharmaceutical research complex. (But NECCO, we miss your sickly sweet emissions wafting down Mass. Ave!)
The Freedom Trail, incidentally, was proposed by newspaper columnist Bill Schofield in March 1951 and dedicated with a series of 30 signs in June of that year by Boston Mayor John B. Hynes. It’s still incredible how quickly that played out. Note to Acting Mayor Kim Janey: You still have at least three months in the job.
The Freedom Trail turns 70 this year. Isn’t it time we found a way to present Boston as a city that has done some pretty important stuff in the aftermath of winning our independence from Britain?
Scott Kirsner can be reached at kirsner@pobox.com. Follow him on Twitter @ScottKirsner.
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