Smithsonian.com

A model of the record-breaking giant LEGO light bulb being built this weekend at the Lemelson Center. Photo courtesy of the Lemelson Center.

August is National Inventors’ Month. To commemorate the occasion, the Lemelson Center for the study of Invention and Innovation at the National Museum of American History invited visitors over the weekend to help construct a record-breaking 8-foot-tall light bulb—made completely out of LEGO bricks.

Tricia Edwards, education specialist at the Lemelson Center, said it took two days, one LEGO master builder and about 300,000 LEGO bricks to complete the light bulb, a universal symbol of a “bright idea.”

Inventions come in all different sizes, shapes and makes, and not all inventions were planned or sought out. Edwards recalls a favorite story of discovery, the creation of the chocolate chip cookie.

In the 1930s, Ruth Graves Wakefield, who along with her husband, owned the Toll House Inn in Massachusetts, was trying to make chocolate drop cookies, which legend says she was famous for. After realizing she didn’t have the right ingredients, she broke up a Nestles chocolate bar thinking the chocolate pieces would melt all the way through—of course the pieces stayed in chunks. In need of  a dessert for the evening’s guests, Wakefield served the cookies anyway. Soon the scrumptious rounds were a must- have on every dessert tray.

The invention of the chocolate chip cookie makes every cookie lover happy.

What invention brightens up your day?