Leave it to MIT faculty members to produce a history of the United States that places science and technology in their rightful place.

Professors Merritt Roe Smith and Pauline Maier have achieved that goal in "Inventing America: A History of the United States," (Norton, 2002) co-authored with Harvard professor Alexander Keyssar and Yale professor Daniel Kelves.

While "Inventing America" seems particularly appropriate to MIT, Maier, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of History, and Smith, the Leverett and William Cutten Professor of the History of Technology, believe their college-level textbook speaks to a wider audience. "The truth is, this is appropriate for Americans in general," said Maier.

Previous texts "created a lot of myths about technological subjects," said Smith. For example, Eli Whitney often is credited with inventing interchangeable parts, but, as the authors of "Inventing America" write, "Interchangeable parts developed incrementally over 30 years, not dramatically and fast."

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