American Unity
National MemorialBlack Hills, South Dakota
Visitors among an early biplane, a steam engine and a dynamo in the Center for Innovation & Technology gallery

04 · Center for Innovation & Technology

Ideas that built America.

World-changing work from the American mosaic, past, present and on the horizon.

The concept

From Edison to the age of AI.

Past innovations, honored alongside the bold ideas of the future.

The center will celebrate Americans from every corner of the mosaic whose work changed industries and the world. Featured stories may include the founders behind Tesla, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, NVIDIA, Vista Equity, Palantir, Prodea and Zscaler, and the industrialists before them: Carnegie, Ford, Chrysler and Edison.

Visitors study a jet engine on display in a bright gallery with views of pine-covered hills

In the galleries

Close enough to touch.

Bronze busts, touch screens and AI kiosks will bring each story close.

  1. Roots of innovation

    They arrived with ideas.

    Many of the ideas that built America came with newcomers: a Chinese-born architect, a Russian-born television pioneer, a German-born printing innovator, a refugee who rose to lead Intel, a Hungarian solar scientist and a Slovak parachute inventor. Each found here the freedom to build. Today, innovators like Taiwanese-born NVIDIA co-founder Jensen Huang carry that tradition into the age of AI.

  2. Side by side

    From the factory floor to the orange grove.

    Henry Ford’s moving assembly line put the automobile within reach of working families. Lue Gim Gong, a Chinese immigrant in Florida, bred a frost-resistant orange that helped sustain the state’s citrus industry.

  3. A showcase for giving

    Innovation that gives back.

    The memorial invites today’s leaders of American industry to give back to the many people they serve and employ. The center will showcase their innovations, present and future.

Support the memorial

Put your legacy beside theirs.

Founding patrons will be named beside the stories they helped tell.

“Read the book” opens at this chapter, page 24.

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