Making 'Nerd Tourism' a Thing in Boston

Boston has such incredible riches when it comes to cultural attractions and sporting events that drive tourist visits: from the ICA and the MFA to the Public Garden and Boston Garden.

But we don't really serve one particular group of visitors very well: people who come to town for scientific and technical conferences, college visits and graduations, job interviews, business meetings, or visitors from abroad who want to understand the startup ecosystem here.

I'm talking about our nerd tourists. They are people who love STEEM (science, technology, engineering, entrepreneurship, and math), and they don't care who knows it.

My friend Bob Krim created an amazing display at Logan Airport, highlighting four centuries of Massachusetts innovation. (See below.) It's a great overview, but visitors see it either on their way into the city, or on their way out.

Over the past two years, Bob and I, and a group of 30+ other amazing folks from the Boston ecosystem, have decided that the "Four Centuries of Massachusetts Innovation" wall shouldn't be the only way we tell the story of this region's DNA of discovery — our drive to solve tough problems.

So we created The Innovation Trail, a way to experience some of the incredible breakthroughs that happened in Boston and later changed the world.

Just a few fun facts that the Trail captures...

• Thomas Edison started his career as an inventor in Boston (working right near the JFK Federal Building), but left for New Jersey after one of his first patented inventions flopped.
• The first time that someone was successfully anesthetized before surgery was at Mass General Hospital in 1846. The surgeon, John Collins Warren, was the son of a Revolutionary war hero.
• Boston's tradition of drop-outs going on to greatness started with Ben Franklin, who left Boston Latin School at the age of 10. Franklin was also an early anti-vaxxer, writing editorials for his brother's newspaper that were skeptical of the incoluations that helped prevent the spread of smallpox in the 1730s.
• The first Technicolor movie ever shown to an audience, in 1917, was screened in downtown Boston at Tremont Temple. The company's name, Technicolor, was a reference to the founders' alma mater, MIT — then known as "The Tech."

• The only NASA facility to ever have been closed was in Kendall Square. During a round of budget cuts, Kennedy-hater RIchard Nixon ratified the decision to shutter Cambridge's Electronics Research Center. If not for that decision, Kendall today would be a vast NASA campus, rather than a bustling hub of tech, biotech, and academic research.
• The last candy factory still operating in Cambridge, owned by Tootsie Brands, produces the world's entire supply of Junior Mints. At one point in the 1940s, Cambridge was home to 66 candy makers — and you could smell sugar on the breeze.

Boston is also the only city in the world where you can walk between four world-class STEM-focused museums: Mass General's Museum of Medical History and Innovation, the Museum of Science, the MIT Museum, and the Broad Institute's new Broad Discovery Center. And that list doesn't include some really amazing public gallery spaces, like those at the Koch Institute or MIT's Stata Center. (Photo below.)

We designed the Trail to be a walkable experience, so it does not traverse the entire state of Massachusetts. But there's a list of off-Trail sites that nerd tourists may want to see, including the Lowell National Historic Park, Henri Termeer Square, the Beacon Hill home of the first venture capitalist, and the early computer that programming pioneer Grace Hopper worked on.

You can experience the Trail in one of three ways:

1. As a guide-led experience, starting this weekend and continuing through the end of October. (Tickets available here. Tours are led by the incredible folks at Cambridge Historical Tours.) This is the first season we've had regular walking tours, but our occasional tours in 2022 earned five-star reviews on TripAdvisor.
2. You can walk some or all of the Trail yourself, with our mobile-friendly website. It includes detailed Google Maps and videos. There's also a print-at-home PDF map if you'd like to have something in your hand.
3. You can set up a custom walking tour on a date of your choosing, any time of the year.

How can you help? Spread the word about it to folks visiting Boston, or bring a group of friends to experience The Innovation Trail yourself. The video below, created by Visual Dialogue, provides a great overview.

We are so grateful to everyone who has been helping put wind in this project's sails. We are working hard to make "nerd tourism" yet another new idea that Boston introduces to the world. Thank you!