A natural extension of the American ethos, which would have you believe that by working hard you can succeed, might suggest that by working harder you can succeed more; by striking out and making a name for yourself you can live forever, if not physiologically, then through your creations, biological or otherwise. This country was founded and built by risk-takers and innovators. And while we live in the age of Amazon and Facebook, Google and Microsoft -- huge tech companies all, each continuing to absorb smaller companies as they prosper and grow -- I don't think Galbraith was ever completely right. The giant corporation is here -- but it has always existed alongside the small-time American entrepreneur.

And representative of that entrepreneurial spirit is, of all things, the mousetrap: A quick-release spring and a piece of metal bent in a few key places that Americans have been trying to improve upon for more than 100 years. "Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door," Ralph Waldo Emerson, philosopher, essayist and co-founder of The Atlantic, supposedly once wrote. And that little saying has popped up time and again, most recently in the April 2011 issue of Wired. In a feature story about the founders of Kickstarter, an arts patronage idea that has morphed into a website responsible for funding thousands of projects, Carlye Adler dismissed Emerson's dictum as "a lovely thought."

"Reality, though, has fallen somewhat short of this promise," Adler declares. "Build a better mousetrap and, if you're extremely lucky, some corporation will take a look at it, send it through dozens of committees, tweak the design to make it cheaper to manufacture, and let the marketing team decide whether it can be priced to return a profit." Adler is right, of course, but that hasn't stopped thousands from trying to improve on an existing design.

Between 1838, when the United States Patent Office opened its doors, and 1996, the year that Jack Hope wrote a story about the device for American Heritage magazine, more than 4,400 mousetrap patents were awarded in dozens of different subclasses, including "Electrocuting and Explosive," "Swinging Striker," "Choking or Squeezing," and 36 others. That's an average of more than two dozen patents every year for more than 150 years. What makes that number more spectacular is that 95 percent of those patents were given to amateur, or first-time inventors.

That's more patents than have been awarded for any other device, according to the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History (NMAH), which is currently celebrating the mousetrap by displaying several different designs on the first floor of the museum in one of several long glass cases that greet visitors, both new and returning, when they enter the building.