This post is by Kellie Taylor, Ed.D., the 2018-2019 Library of Congress Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow.
Alexander Graham Bell meticulously documented his experiments in aerial locomotion for human flight. His notebooks capture the effort he put into designing and testing aerial possibilities. He was able to identify what worked – and what did not – through the engineering design process. Bell’s notebooks create a great learning opportunity for students to explore the work of an early innovator, try to replicate his results, and then test their own design innovations.