Kinjiro Matsudaira, born September 13, 1885 in Pennsylvania, was an American inventor and politician in Maryland. He was the son of a Japanese father and an American mother. In May 1912, he filed for a patent concerning the functions of a thermometric fire-detector and was granted the patent in September 1914.
He entered politics and, in 1927, was elected as mayor of Edmonston, Maryland, a small community just outside of Washington, DC. He is the first Asian American to be elected mayor in the US. He was re-elected as mayor in 1943.
He passed away in October 1963 at the age of 78.
