From next Monday our new exhibition Inventing the 21st century, opens here at the British Library in our Folio Society Gallery, and runs until 28 November 2010.
It is a celebration of wonderful British ingenuity, and contains a wide range of inventions from sport to tackling climate change to the weekly nightmare of changing your duvet cover. It also includes President Obama’s favourite dog bowl (as seen – and rejected – on Dragons Den), and Dyson’s revolutionary bladeless fan.
My colleague Steve van Dulken is the curator of the exhibition and has already covered several of the inventions on show in his excellent Patent Search blog.
We are also running an Ingenious Britons evening event, where you will be able to hear from and put questions to some of the inventors.
In conjunction with the exhibition we also have an Invent it! campaign. We want to inspire the next generation of ingenious Britons to develop products to make your lives easier, from a mug of tea that never goes cold, to a smart phone battery that can last all week. Personally, I would like to have a stretchy keyboard for my Blackberry, as I can touch type, but my clunking fingers are far too big for the standard BB keys.
What would you like to see an invention for? Have your say on our Facebook fan page and Twitter using the hashtag #bipcinvent
We’ll be announcing the top ten ideas during Global Entrepreneurship Week (15 – 19 November).