National History Day’s 2009-2010 theme is Innovation in History: Impact and Change. Students can explore and interpret the concept of innovation and its impact on history through many different types of topics, including art, science, politics, religion, business and social action. Projects can focus on individuals, like religious leader, architect and builder Mother Joseph of the Sisters of Providence, events, like the Century 21 Exposition, or institutions, like the Pike Place Public Market in Seattle.

Hard times often spur creativity and innovation. During the Great Depression desperate people staged Hunger Marches and Farmers Holidays to draw attention to their needs, built “Hoovervilles” to house themselves, and came up with new currencies, such as “Oyster Money,” to substitute for cash after banks closed. The Great Depression also spurred the federal government to come up with an innovative “New Deal,” including the “National Recovery Act” (NRA), the Works Progress Administration” (WPA), the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and Social Security, to aid the destitute and get people back to work. The State of Washington instituted Washington Emergency Relief Administration (WERA) to administer New Deal programs. The idea that government had a responsibility to provide for its citizens through social programs was an innovation that changed our understanding of the federal government itself.

The arts are inherently creative and offer many opportunities for interpreting the role of innovation in history. In the Pacific Northwest, the blues influenced a distinctive strain of rock-and-roll music in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Later on, “grunge” was so influential that Seattle achieved an international music reputation. In the 1930s the Federal Negro Theater Project introduced Seattle audiences to both local African American actors and African American themes in its productions. The “Northwest School” of artists gained international fame in the mid-twentieth century.

Politicians and political movements are constantly reinventing themselves. Women’s suffrage, prohibition, Washington’s Public Disclosure Act and citizen initiative and referendum are examples of innovation in politics and innovation brought about by political action. The Joint Legislative Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities in the State of Washington was formed in 1947 and chaired by Representative Albert Canwell from Spokane. Although it drew its inspiration from a similar committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, the method of investigating and subpoenaing public testimony by individuals suspected of Communist activities used by Representative Canwell was adopted by Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin and used in the hearings he conducted through the U. S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations between 1950 and 1954.

At its best, education is an enterprise that thrives on innovation. The Populist Washington Governor John Rogers pushed the Barefoot School Boy Act through the State Legislature in the 1890s to make basic education a fundamental priority of state government. During the first three decades of the twentieth century Superintendent Frank Cooper led the development of a Progressive Education curriculum in the Seattle School District that attracted attention and young teachers throughout the Northwest. In 1910 the Tacoma School District established an innovative partnership with the local business community to develop a new stadium for the City. It was built in an unused ravine owned by the School District with donations gathered voluntarily by the business community. Tacoma Stadium, now known as Stadium Bowl, serves as a major venue for school and community activities to this day.

Government has traditionally focused on establishing and enforcing laws for the common good of the citizens it serves, public safety, and building and maintaining roads and other public infrastructure. However, at different points in time government has branched out to other functions to meet specific needs.

Beginning in the 1930s public housing authorities were established to provide affordable dwellings to low-income people or to meet specific housing crises, such as quickly developing housing for the thousands of factory workers that came to the Northwest during World War II. In 1940 the Seattle Housing Authority opened Yesler Terrace, the first racially integrated public housing complex in the nation.

In 1911 the Washington State Legislature authorized the formation of public port districts to develop shipping facilities that would be available to all businesses. Since then public port districts in Washington have built world-class maritime, rail and auto freight facilities, international airports, industrial and business parks. Early on, they became involved in the promotion of international trade and local economic development that has helped to make Washington one of the leading export and import shipping centers in the United States.

In the 1960s the Seattle Fire Department worked with the University of Washington Medical School to develop the Medic I program that saved many lives by providing rapid response medical treatment for heart attack vicims and served as the prototype for the emergency medical services that are now provided by fire departments throughout the nation.

In the 1890s the City of Seattle began the process of remaking its topography. By 1930 the City had gotten rid of an entire hill and reduced the height and steepness of several others. The dirt and rock removed by the these "regrades" was used to fill in the south end of Elliott Bay. This, in turn, created new land for shipping facilties and industrial development.

In 1930 Washington voters passed an initiative that enabled them to form public utility districts to provide themselves with electricity. A number of cities had been providing electrical service to their residents since the 1890s. The advent of publicly-owned electric utilities helped to reduce rates in urban areas and bring service to rural areas that did not have access to electricity before.

The Grand Coulee Dam, center of the Columbia Basic Project, was the largest dam in the world when it was completed in 1940. It's use of the Columbia Basin topography was spectacularly innovative. The resources that the Columbia Basin Project profoundly changed farming on the rugged plains of Eastern Washington and industrial development throughout the Pacific Northwest.

Innovation has been celebrated in large public expositions and world’s fairs; three have taken place in Washington State. Seattle’s 1909 Alaska, Yukon Pacific Exposition (AYPE) celebrated the Alaska and Yukon gold rushes and the economic benefits that they brought to the Washington’s economy. It also promoted Seattle as a major export and import center for trade across the Pacific Ocean; today, Washington is the most trade-dependent state in the country. In 1961, the Century 21 Exposition (also known as the Seattle Worlds Fair) promoted the role of science and technological innovation and the changes that they would bring by the turn of the twenty-first century; within two decades, a couple of Harvard dropouts founded Microsoft.. By contrast, Spokane’s EXPO 74, the first “Environmental” world’s fair, focused on innovation in the protection of our natural environment and resources; Washington’s longtime U. S. Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson oversaw major changes in national environmental policy, including the Clean Air and Clean Water acts.

Transportation is another abundant source for topics that reflect the role of innovation in history. The aviation, the first Lake Washington Floating Bridge, the Mullan Road, the Oregon Trail, railroads, street railways, the Good Roads Movement and the monorails in Seattle are topics with abundant local sources that can be used to interpret this theme.

Many innovations have been huge successes, while others have been colossal failures. In either case, innovations may bring about changes that they were never meant to produce. These unintended outcomes can be great starting points for historical interpretation. Indian treaties and boarding schools, the Fur Trade, flood control projects, hydro-electric dams, Missionaries in the Pacific Northwest, Washington Public Power Supply System (WPPSS) and the Goldmark Trial are topics through which unintended outcomes might be explored and interpreted.
Whatever topic is chosen, students must clearly show how it reflects the theme Innovation in History: Impact and Change. Students must also explain how the topic is historically significant and the long term social, cultural, environmental or economic changes that it has brought about.