From Lab to Living Room to Your Coin Library

Sitting around the Littleton Coin writers’ table, we thought this topic might be a fun read for new collectors: A few of the more interesting consumer products inspired by the ongoing Innovation Dollar Series.

They Came From Outer Space

O.K, they really came from the Kennedy Space Center, but I couldn’t resist writing that subhead! Florida’s Innovation dollar honors the space shuttle program. So far, it’s launched 135 missions, including flights that carried humans into orbit, performed satellite recovery and repair, and built the International Space Station. Recognize any of these products?

• Biodegradable lubricants: Originally formulated for the massive crawlers that move space shuttles to and from their launch pads, these emollients are now used on sporting equipment, and in marine engines and race cars.
• Orthotic knee support: To ensure shuttle stability, NASA developed advanced composite materials and computer algorithms. Using these two advances led to the development and manufacture of lightweight, highly durable, shock-absorbing hinged braces for knee support.
• Scratch-resistant eyewear: From NASA’s need to protect delicate helmet visors from cosmic dust and debris, this abrasion-resistant coating is used to make sunglasses and prescription lenses more resistant to scratches.

Not to be outdone in outer space is Texas’ Innovation dollar for Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center. Around the clock, it manages all flight control for the U.S. space program while also supporting the International Space Station, and planning astronauts’ daily activities. Hikers, EMTs and cold-weather fans might be familiar with these products:

• Temperature-regulated bedding: Initially developed to protect astronauts from extreme temperatures is now used in specialized sheets, comforters and mattress pads that can absorb and store excess body heat, releasing it only after a body as cooled down.
• Advanced Insulation: Aerogel insulation designed for space suits can now be found as tiny-home insulation and as light-weight, high-performance outdoor clothing.

Maryland’s Innovation dollar shined a spotlight on the heavenly Hubble Space Telescope. Outfitted with cameras, spectrographs and interferometers, it’s been analyzing light from the outer limits since 1990. As the pioneer in high-sensitivity ultraviolet/infrared detectors and digital imaging sensors, Hubble’s design wound up revolutionizing medical diagnostics, especially in breast cancer detection.

The Wisconsin Wizard

At ten years old, Seymour Cray built a device out of Erector Set components that converted punched paper tape into Morse code signals. Though not in the living room or garage, the family home’s basement in Chippewa Falls, WI became his laboratory.

Fifty-two years later, and an engineer, Cray designed the world’s first and fastest supercomputer. The elegantly simple design wrapped 60+ miles of three-foot wiring in a C formation. The shape drastically reduced signal delays and increased clock speeds – calculating in the trillions per second!

He sold his first machine, the Cray-A1, to the National Center for Atmospheric Research in 1976. What did that mean for farmers and city dwellers? Vastly improved weather predictions. Calculations for the arrival of severe thunderstorms and tornadoes in local, as well as mountainous and coastal areas were, and still are, a tremendous help getting the public ready for whatever may come.

Apple Computer Co. bought a Cray X-MP supercomputer in the 1980s to speed up its computer-aided designs; to model the internal design of microchip architecture; to run MacOS (operating system) emulators for interface prototyping, and to design future Macintosh models consumers would fall in love with.

Steve Jobs 2.0

Like nearly all Silicon Valley origin stories from the 1970s, Apple started in a garage. This one belonged to Steve Jobs’ parents in Los Altos, CA. A hardware company initially, Apple quickly outgrew its cramped, location and moved to a corporate campus in nearby Cupertino. Then, in 1985, Jobs famously lost a boardroom brawl with the soft drink marketing executive he had hired to help run Apple, and was forced to resign.

Jobs returned from exile 12 years later with a new outlook, new technology and a new vision for the consumer market with a distinct California vibe. He brought both the corporate culture and the groundbreaking 3D rendering software he helped develop after buying Lucasfilm’s computer graphics division. Under his leadership, its software had set the standard for photorealistic animation. Jobs renamed the company Pixar Animation Studios, and its first film in 1995 was the hugely successful Toy Story.

Jobs had also started NeXT, a computer workstation company whose sophisticated, high-end operating system was designed for education and business users. When he was brought back to Apple to shore up its flagging sales, Jobs saw an opportunity to meld Pixar’s innovative software with Macintosh’s desktop computer hardware for everyday users.

In 1998, Apple rolled out the iMac personal computer, followed by the portable iPod for music in 2001. Jobs’ marketing genius described the “i” as not just representing the internet, but also the words individual, instruct, inform and inspire.

Apple’s innovations continued to make headlines: the internet-connected iPhone and iTV; the portable touch-screen tablet called the iPad. The iWatch arrived in 2015; the name later became Apple Watch. Together, all these innovations left Apple’s competitors scrambling to catch up.

Bonus Round

Apple’s interactive iTV, renamed Apple TV for the official launch in 2006, provided two-way interactivity, not only for gaming applications, but also as a smart home hub, allowing its users to connected accessories like smart lights, locks and thermostats.

But the idea to take a basic television box and adapt it for personal computing can be found on the New Hampshire’s Innovation Dollar. That coin honors the first home video game console designed to connect to any unmodified TV.

The reverse depicts Ralph Baer’s brown box game “Handball” on the right side of the coin. The left side features Player 1 on an incused background. The text encircling the outside of the coin is meant to pay homage to Baer’s game, Odyssey. The dollar’s overall design is intended to symbolize an arcade token.

Never Too Late to Join the Collecting Fun

The Innovation Dollar series stretches from 2018 to 2032 – we’re a little more than half way through in 2026 as I write this Heads & Tails. The very first Innovation dollar featured a facsimile of George Washington’s signature. In 1790, the president signed the first U.S. patent issued for a process to make potash and pearlash, ingredients used in fertilizer and soap.

Then, starting annually in 2019, four new and intricate reverse designs pay tribute to an important innovator or innovation from each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia and the 5 U.S. Territories. Struck in the same golden-colored manganese composition as Presidential and Native American dollars, these coins share the common obverse of the Statue of Liberty.

Have we written about your favorite Innovation dollar yet? Or, do you have your eye on one, or a state, that you’re curious about? Let us know in the comments below!

SOURCES

“Space Shuttle Spinoffs.” https://spinoff.nasa.gov/pdf/Shuttle_spinoffs.pdf. Accessed June1, 2026.

SpaceRef. “Shuttle Program Results in Down to Earth Technology Discoveries.” Space News. October 11, 2000. https://spacenews.com/shuttle-program-results-in-down-to-earth-technology-discoveries/

Coutts, Donna. “NASA space inventions for everyday Earthlings.” Kids News. January 29, 2020. https://www.kidsnews.com.au/space/nasa-space-inventions-for-everyday-earthlings/news-story/af5f03ff1a52f296bb2f9b08529e864d

Lynn Neary, Lynn & Mondello, Bob. “Steve Jobs Helped Revolutionize Animated Movies.” Morning Edition. October 6, 2011. https://www.npr.org/2011/10/06/141105141/steve-jobs-left-his-mark-on-pixar