The Widgets of 128:
How a Highway Invented the Future

free with museum admission

You're probably very familiar with Route 128. Perhaps you drive it every day to and from work. I'm sure you've been in your share of its legendary traffic snarls. Route 128 is so much a part of your life that you probably take it for granted.

But did you ever consider that Route 128 is a major part of this region's success? That this seemingly ordinary road is responsible for changing the way the Boston area - and America itself - works? Believe it or not, when it was created in the 1950s as one of the country's first beltways, Route 128 was a revolutionary transportation innovation that ushered in new concepts like "suburbia," "office parks," "rush hour," and even "high tech" itself.

Learn more about the contributions of "America's Technology Highway" at The Widgets of 128: How a Highway Invented the Future, on display at the Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation between November, 2005 and August, 2006.

The Widgets of 128 is an intriguing examination ofthe companies, products, and inventions that blossomed along Route 128. The highwayliterally and figuratively moved Boston in new directions, opening up the surrounding farms and fields to residential and commercial development like never before. These "wide open spaces" quickly became fertile ground for the "wide open ideas" of companies such as Raytheon, Polaroid, Hewlett-Packard, Digital Equipment Corporation, and many others which gave birth to the nation's unprecedented technology boom.

The Widgets of 128 explores ways in which this famous stretch of pavement contributed to the development of incredibly innovative products: tubes, transistors, military technology, instant cameras, microwave ovens, artificial hearts, microcomputing, software, 3-D modeling, robotics. In addition to displaying the products, the exhibition will highlight the stories of technology's pioneers, the inventors, innovators, and companies that paved the way into the 21st century.

 

Object List

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Sponsored by:

Analog Devices * Artisan Industries * Arthur Nelson
Lou & Betty Nocera * Raytheon Company