Pittsburgh has big ideas. One professor is documenting them

Heinz ketchup. Mister Rogers’ “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.” Smiley cookies.

Pittsburgh professor and author Mike Madison has chronicled these unmistakably Pittsburgh things as part of his Intellectual Property Hall of Fame. He began the project in 2020 during the pandemic — just for fun.

“I really wanted to dig into Pittsburgh history and make sure that people who might have been more celebrated at an earlier point in time get brought forward, and identified, and celebrated for their careers and their contributions,” he said.

“We’ve got the boatloads of amazingly creative people in Pittsburgh going back a hundred years. And if my little website can bring just a smidgen of attention to some of that, then I’m happy.”

A University of Pittsburgh professor, Madison focuses on the ways that institutions create and distribute information. In the classroom, topics include intellectual property law and commercial law. He’s the author of more than 60 journal articles and book chapters and a co-editor of several books.

Tradition is deeply rooted in Pittsburgh’s culture, and that’s evident through the enduring popularity in uniquely Pittsburgh ideas, he said.

Some ideas aren’t necessarily trademarked, such as the parking chair. Parking chairs are in other cities, too, such as Boston and Chicago.

“You plant your flag, literally, and that flag is a marker of your claim, right? Think gold rush in California in the 1840s, right? You’re the first person to discover gold in that stream. You’ve made your claim. And the parking chair is just this very entertaining illustration of the principle of, ‘I’m first, I dug my car out,’” he said.

Works of art, too, figure prominently on Madison’s list. Among a list of composers is Fred Rogers, creator of musical children’s series “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” Its theme song “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” remains an enduring anthem.  

“The messages that [Rogers] was communicating are things that I think will be relevant throughout time, and messages that people will always need to hear,” said Emily Uhrin, a senior archivist for the Fred Rogers Institute, a nonprofit based in Latrobe.

Speaking of Mister Rogers’ music generally, she said, “Even though a lot of them he wrote in the late 1960s, early 1970s, he kept performing them throughout the years. I think that they can continue throughout time, and people will always be able to resonate with the music.”

Some traditions popularized in Pittsburgh catch fire elsewhere, such as Light Up Night. The name is Light Up Night, a name trademarked by the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership. 

The first Light Up Night in Pittsburgh was held in 1960, according to PDP records provided by Richard Hooper, vice president of communications.

When it began, every store Downtown simultaneously turned on their window lights. Now, the event is headlined by the lighting of a tree at the City-County Building and the Highmark Christmas Tree by Gateway Center. 

Zambelli Fireworks light up the sky to commemorate the occasion.

Beyond art, the city is often lauded for its big ideas, namely innovations in science and technology. But much inventiveness was driven out of Westinghouse, Madison said. The company’s founder, George Westinghouse, held more than 300 patents.

Today’s culture of business inventiveness is different.

“In a lot of ways, the inventiveness that you’re seeing right now is new because it’s broader, more of a startup culture, more linked to health sciences and medicine and medical technology, which is very much a late 20^th-century, early 21^st-century development in Pittsburgh. There’s a lot happening in Pittsburgh right now. 

“I would not say that it’s Hall of Fame because it’s too new, but there’s definitely a shift in the economy and culture from a more hierarchical industrial economy,” he said

Madison grew up in California, and more than two decades later he says he’s still learning about his adopted home.

“I have figured all of this out because when I moved to Pittsburgh 25 years ago, I instantly figured out that this is a really fascinating place. Pittsburgh has history in American terms, and a lot of families who are from Pittsburgh are very attached to the history. But a lot of Pittsburghers don’t necessarily know as much about their own history collectively as they might. 

“So, I sort of feel like I’m an ambassador for Pittsburgh’s own image of itself.”

The Next Generation Newsroom, part of the Center for Media Innovation at Point Park University, is a regional news service that focuses on government and enterprise reporting in southwestern Pennsylvania. Find out more information on foundation and corporate funders here.