For his many years of effort in promoting America and our "American Made" manufacturing heritage John Ratzenberger has easily earned his place among our most popular AmericanMadeHeroes.com!

NBT is inspiring the next generation of manufacturers, welders, plumbers, carpenters and more ... one tinkerer at a time.

I've heard firsthand from dozens of factory owners that one of their biggest fears, apart from foreign competition, is how to stay in business when so few young Americans are capable of, or interested in, working with their hands. If Americans are to remain a strong force in the industrial and technological world, then we must reintroduce our young people to the joys of tinkering.

But the consequences of kids being unable to work with their hands are profound -- and not in a good way. As a recent Stanford University study reported, future engineers who are great in physics and calculus but can't think in new ways about old objects are doomed to think in old ways about new objects. Their engineering skills will be lacking in the one essential without which a background in physics and calculus is all but irrelevant: practicality. How will they stand on the shoulders of giants to invent something that has never existed?

Click here ... Nuts, Bolts & Thingamajigs Foundation (NTB) and Mr. Ratzenberger