Inventions of Note is a sheet music collection that was established in 1997 as part of the Lewis Music Library at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This collection is a very unusual collection of sheet music, because all of the music that it contains is about inventions, such as telephones, airplanes, and automobiles. The collection was funded by the MIT Council for the Arts. Most of the collection dates from 1890 to 1920 and is popular music of that time period. The collection contains approximately 50 pieces of music that are in PDF format but has links to the Levy Sheet Music Collection at Johns Hopkins University, the Music of the Nation collection at the Library of Congress, and the Sam DeVincent Collection at the Smithsonian Institute. All of these collections contain music about inventions in the United States.
The collection is set up so that the user can either browse the collection or can scan an alphabetical list of titles. I was a little disappointed that I could not find a search option. Also, there are a couple of pieces of music that have an audio recording as well as the PDF of the sheet music. There is a helpful section that tells the user how to print the music and download the audio recordings, if they need help. Although the collection is small, the uniqueness of it makes it very valuable along with links to other similar collections.
