YOU WILL HAVE NOTICED A NEW LINE ON THE cover of the magazine: IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE NATIONAL INVENTORS HALL OF FAME . This marks the beginning of a partnership with an institution uniquely allied with what we do. It’s an alliance that we believe promises great benefit to both sides.

Invention & Technology got its start 17 years ago as a magazine made possible by a single sponsor and advertiser, General Motors. GM was a terrific backer, but 17 years is a long time, and over that period the world changed, and GM changed, and eventually the company could no longer champion us as it so generously had.

As soon as we began to think about seeking a new patron, we discovered that the timing could not be better. The National Inventors Hall of Fame, based in Akron, Ohio, was just looking for new ways to reach out, and the Hall of Fame is truly a counterpart to Invention a1 Technology—a place and organization devoted to broadening public understanding of and appreciation for the central role of inventors and innovation in the making of every aspect of the world around us. Moreover, it is a growing, thriving national institution just entering its prime.

Its museum, in Akron, honors the 168 inventors already enshrined during the Hall’s annual induction ceremonies, which began in 1973, and houses a variety of science- and technology-related exhibits. The Hall of Fame also runs an expanding array of national programs beyond its annual induction of new inventors, including a collegiate inventors awards competition, recognizing the next generation of innovators, and Camp Invention, which gives school-age children across the country the chance to become innovators themselves.

One fruit of our partnership will be a column in each issue of the magazine bringing news of events at the Hall of Fame, and this issue’s inaugural report includes a full introduction to the Hall, its history, and the many things it does, along with an account of the most recent induction ceremony, held this past December. The author is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist now affiliated with the Hall, Jim Quinn. You’ll find his piece on page 11.

Our partnership will give the magazine the opportunity to draw on the Hall of Fame’s many resources in preparing our articles, and it will allow us and the Hall together to develop new programs to enrich and expand what each of us does already. It will also give us the underwriting support we need to keep bringing you the magazine—courtesy, ultimately, of the Hall of Fame’s corporate sponsors, whose advertisements you’ll be seeing in our pages.

Our editorial mission will remain, of course, the same. We will continue doing in Invention & Technology what we’ve always done, bringing you the best articles we can about America’s inventive past and the making of its present, in all its stunning variety, successes and failures alike, and the stories of the remarkable men and women who have made it all happen. And we’ll keep trying always to do it better. We will do so strengthened by being teamed with an organization whose purpose is so much the same. We trust you’ll agree, as our union grows, that the pairing is a natural one.