At Davison, idea people are at the forefront of our success. As we celebrate Black History Month, we commemorate three African American inventors who changed history. Without their inventions, our lives would be drastically different today. Learn about the fascinating lives and inventions of these idea people!

George Washington Carver

Best known for his idea that revolutionized agriculture in the south, George Washington Carver ultimately transformed the economy. In the late 1800s, this botany student at the Iowa Agricultural College was recruited by Booker T. Washington to join the Tuskegee Institute’s Agricultural School, where Carver would discover and share his new agricultural technique.

Carver found that growing cotton year after year exhausted soil of its nutrients. To end this vicious cycle, Carver planted cotton one year and soil-enriching peanuts or sweet potatoes the next. Southern farmers gave his method a chance and reaped the benefits. Because of Carver’s innovative method, the soil was of better quality and the farmers were able to feed their livestock with the surplus of peanuts.

Carver also famously developed more than 300 ways to use peanuts, some of which were cooking oil, hand lotion and even ink!

Madam C.J. Walker

It was hair loss that inspired this innovative inventor to find a better way. Madam Walker’s story dates back to the 1890s when she began suffering from hair loss, a very common occurrence at this time in history. To find a solution to this ongoing problem, Madam Walker began conducting her own experiments and after some time, she created her formula that she dubbed, “Madam C.J. Walker’s Wonderful Hair Grower.” Once her invention was completed, she hit the road and made her rounds throughout the country spreading the word about her hair care tips and products for African American women. It was her knowledge, determination and self-promotional expertise that made Madam Walker one of the first self-made female millionaires in America!

Lewis Howard Latimer

Latimer is best known for his lightbulb moment that occurred when he worked with famous inventor Hiram Maxim at the U.S. Electric Lighting Company. In 1881, Latimer received a patent for a carbon filament for the incandescent lightbulb. It was this invention that shed light on a better way to make electric lighting not only more practical, but also affordable for the average household as well!

Now, these were three historic African American inventors. Check back in the coming weeks when we spotlight contemporary inventors!

Copyright Davison, 2016

Sources:

http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/bhistory/inventors/index.htm

Images:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/George_Washington_Carver-crop.jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Madame_CJ_Walker.gif

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Lewis_latimer.jpg

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George Washington Carver was born on his uncle’s farm in Missouri in 1864. His very early life was traumatic: his father died before he was born, and he and his mother were kidnapped by Confederate night-raiders when he was just a baby. When the Civil War ended, his uncle found him and brought him back to the farm, though Carver’s mother was never found. Carver’s uncle and aunt raised him and his brother from that point forward. When he was about twelve years old, Carver decided he wanted to attend school. Unfortunately, because of segregation, there were no schools that accepted black students close to the farm, so he had to leave his aunt and uncle’s home and travel to southwest Missouri to find a school he could attend. There, he studied diligently, worked as a farm hand to support himself, and went on to attend high school in Minneapolis, Kansas.

Carver had applied to many colleges for years, but was rejected because of racial barriers. While he waited to be accepted, he used his cultivation skills to start a small conservatory of plants and flowers. It was his love of plants and flowers that would guide him the rest of his life. Carver finally gained acceptance to a small art college when he was in his late twenties. Since the school had no science classes, Carver had to study piano. But, soon after that, in 1891, he was able to transfer to Iowa State Agricultural College (now Iowa State University) to study botany—and he became the first African American student ever admitted to the college. He received both a BS and a Master’s degree in agriculture from Iowa State, and because of his proficiency in plant breeding, Carver was appointed to the faculty, becoming Iowa State’s first African American faculty member as well.

While attending his graduate classes and teaching undergrads, Carver was also becoming an expert in plant and fungus pathology. He published several articles on his work, which earned him respect throughout the nation. In 1896, he completed his master’s degree and was invited by Booker T. Washington to join the faculty of Alabama’s Tuskegee Institute as the Director of Agriculture. It was at Tuskegee that Carver developed his crop rotation method, a method to alternate the planting of soil-depleting crops, like cotton, with soil-enriching crops, such as peanuts, peas, soybeans, sweet potatoes, and pecans.

Through Carver’s rotation system, crops flourished—especially peanuts, sweet potatoes, and pecans. This led him to develop many alternate uses for these plants, although the popular story of him inventing peanut butter is actually not true. Here are a few of the innovative things he did create from these crops: adhesives, axle grease, fuel briquettes (think biofuel), ink, linoleum, metal polish, paper, plastic, shaving cream, shoe polish, synthetic rubber, talcum powder, and wood stain. All in all, Carver’s work resulted in the creation of over 300 products from peanuts, more than 100 products from sweet potatoes, and hundreds more from a dozen other plants native to the South. He also produced 500 different shades of dye; and, in 1927, he invented a process for producing paints and stains from soybeans.

Despite the hundreds of things he created, Carver was an extremely altruistic man and really never tried to personally benefit from his work, financially or otherwise. He only filed for three patents in his entire life, one for a cosmetic and the other two for paints. All of his other innovations he freely gave to the world through open publications. He is credited with saying: “How can I sell them (his ideas) to someone else? God gave them to me.” In 1940, Carver donated his life savings to establish the Carver Research Foundation at Tuskegee, with the mandate that it should continue his research in agriculture. Inscribed on the tombstone of this remarkably selfless man is the epitaph: “He could have added fortune to fame, but caring for neither, he found happiness and honor in being helpful to the world.”

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We could think of no better way to celebrate Black History Month than to feature African American inventors, such as Granville Woods, who changed history, and without whom our lives would be drastically different today. Many people may have never heard of Granville Woods, but he and his inventions had a profound impact on all of our lives.

A self-educated man, Woods taught himself mechanical and electrical engineering and became a successful inventor, holding more than 50 patents.  He is considered to be one of the ten most important African American inventors of all time, and was so prolific that he has often been compared to Thomas Edison. Probably his best known invention was a telegraph that allowed messages to be communicated from a moving train to a train station, allowing train engineers and station masters to know how close a train was to another, which greatly reduced accidents and collisions between trains.

Woods was born in 1856 in Columbus, Ohio and attended school until he was about 10 years old.  Forced to quit school so he could get a job, he became an apprentice in a machine shop and learned the trades of machinist and blacksmith while repairing railroad equipment and machinery. He developed a fascination for the electricity that powered the machinery, and spent the next few years learning everything he could about electrical engines and all of the other machinery used in railroads.  He also took as many night school courses in mechanics as he could afford, and would encourage his fellow workers to teach him everything they knew. Ultimately, this love of railroad and electrical engines would lead to him to creating a variety of inventions relating to the railroad industry.

One of his first inventions was a device which essentially was a combination of a telephone and a telegraph that allowed a telegraph station to send voice and telegraph messages over a single wire. Woods filed for a patent for his “telegraphony” in 1885 and later sold the rights to this device to Alexander Graham Bell’s company The American Bell Telephone Company.  The money he made on that deal enabled him to become a full-time inventor.

In 1887, he patented the Synchronous Multiplex Railway Telegraph, which allowed communications between train stations and moving trains, and resulted in a huge improvement in rail safety. Surprisingly, Thomas Edison sued Woods, saying that he had created a similar telegraph first and that he was entitled to the patent for the device. The courts sided with Woods, so Edison sued him again. After losing again, the story goes that Edison decided it would be better to have Woods work for him than against him, and offered Woods a prominent position in the engineering department of the Edison Electric Light Company. Woods turned him down.

By now, Granville Woods was becoming a well-known figure in the invention world, and he began to produce a string of inventions and patents. In 1887, in addition to his Multiplex telegraph, he also filed patent applications for a train’s electromagnetic brake apparatus.  In 1888, he manufactured a system of overhead electric conducting lines for railroads, upgraded tunnel construction for electric railways, created a galvanic battery, and made more improvement to railway telegraphy. In 1889, he filed a patent for an improvement to the steam-boiler furnace and automatic safety cut-outs for electric circuits.

In 1892, Woods used his knowledge of electrical systems in creating a method of supplying electricity to a train without any exposed wires or secondary batteries.  He devised a system where the track had a third rail with iron blocks spaced every 12 feet and electricity was passed to the train as it passed over these blocks.  Ironically, when he filed a patent for this “third rail” propulsion system, Thomas Edison had beaten him to it, holding a patent on a similar system ten years earlier.  So, though their paths crisscrossed several times in throughout thier lives, both Woods and Edison had a mutual respect for each other and a mutual love of inventing.

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