The Heroic Age of American Invention

The Heroic Age of American Invention is a 1961 science book for children by L. Sprague de Camp, published by Doubleday. It was reprinted in 1993 by Barnes & Noble under the title Heroes of American Invention.

By "heroic age" the author means the era of American history in which individual initiative and enterprise constituted the primary thread in technical innovation, roughly from the early 19th century until mass production and corporate enterprise outpaced that of the individual around the time of World War I. The story of innovation is told through the biographies and inventions of thirty-two key inventors of the United States' industrial revolution, whom de Camp feels were pivotal in converting the country from an agrarian nation to an industrial one.

Some of the inventors spotlighted include Robert L. Stevens, George Westinghouse, Samuel Morse, Samuel Colt, Cyrus McCormick, Alexander Graham Bell, and Thomas Edison.