Science and the American Experiment: 250 Years of Innovation

The exhibition is only viewable during NAS Building tours and select special events.

For 250 years, science, engineering, and medicine have helped the United States grow, heal, connect, and explore. This exhibition tells that story through the people, institutions, and discoveries that shaped the nation. Organized into six thematic sections, it traces the enduring relationship between scientific discovery and the public good.

The first two sections explore the relationship between science and government. From Benjamin Franklin’s American Philosophical Society to the National Academy of Sciences—chartered by Abraham Lincoln in 1863—American leaders have long relied on scientific expertise. In turn, federal investment in research has fueled major advances, from national laboratories to the Naval Research Laboratory’s early work on radar and GPS. Innovation, however, rarely happens on its own. The second section examines the systems that support discovery, from the Patent Clause of the Constitution and the Morrill Land-Grant Act to the National Science Foundation’s competitive grant model and DARPA’s Grand Challenge, which accelerated the development of self-driving vehicles.

The next two sections focus on the tools and networks that transformed modern life. Progress depends on precision, and the third section highlights scientists who expanded the limits of measurement and understanding: Albert Michelson, who measured the speed of light with unprecedented accuracy in the 1870s; Henrietta Swan Leavitt, whose work with Cepheid variable stars helped astronomers measure the scale of the universe; and the LIGO team, which detected gravitational waves in 2015, confirming a prediction Einstein made a century earlier. The fourth section shows how large systems can be as transformative as individual inventions. From the Erie Canal and Samuel Morse’s telegraph to rural electrification and ARPANET—the Defense Department network that laid the groundwork for today’s internet—these innovations reshaped how people and information move across great distances.

The final two sections examine science in service to human life, both on Earth and beyond. Medical advances have extended and improved lives, from the Framingham Heart Study, which showed that disease could be prevented as well as treated, to Charles Drew’s development of large-scale blood banking during World War II and the Human Genome Project, completed in 2003. The final section follows the drive to explore new frontiers—from Marie Tharp’s seafloor maps, which helped confirm plate tectonics, to Mars rovers that found evidence of ancient water, to Voyager 1, still transmitting from beyond the solar system nearly fifty years after its launch. That spirit continues today. Artemis II, which carried astronauts around the Moon for the first time since Apollo, marks humanity’s return to deep space and the next steps toward the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

This exhibition was organized by Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution. It was designed by Fabio Cutro, with original illustrations by Olivia Angelozzi-Commodore.

Image: Image captured aboard Artemis II on April 6, 2026. The view shows the Moon’s rugged surface and Ohm crater in sharp detail as Earth sets in the distance. Credit: NASA.