Journalists decide which anniversaries to commemorate and which achievements to celebrate.

Publishers decide which biographies to commission and which to pass on.

Archivists decide which collections to preserve and which to allow to deteriorate.

These decisions, made individually and cumulatively, construct a historical record that tells some stories well and others not at all.

The history of invention and technology is particularly prone to this selective recording.

The “great inventor” narrative — the story of the lone genius who, through individual brilliance, transformed human life — has historically been applied almost exclusively to white men.

Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Henry Ford, the Wright Brothers: these are the inventors who have been written about in textbooks, honored with museums, commemorated with holidays and buildings named in their honor.