Celebrating Black History Month: Granville T. Woods, inventor

Granville T. Woods, born April 23, 1856 in Columbus, Ohio, was an African American inventor who held over 50 US patents.  He had to leave school at age 10 to work to help support his poor family.  He worked in a machine shop, where he learned machining and blacksmithing.  

In 1872, he worked as a fireman for the Danville and Southern Railroad in Missouri. In 1874, he moved to Springfield, Illinois where he worked at a rolling mill.  He studied mechanical and electrical engineering in college but there is no evidence he received a college degree.

Among his inventions are a egg incubator, an automatic brake, a steam boiler furnace, and a patented Synchronous Multiplex Railway telegraphs, which allowed communications between train stations from moving trains.  

Thomas Edison filed a claim to ownership of this invention, saying he had created it first.  He took Woods to court twice, but Woods prevailed both time. Woods spent a lot of time defending his inventions from others who claimed they were the ones who invented them.

Woods died of a cerebral hemorrhage in New York City, January 30, 1910.  In 2006, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Celebrating Black History Month: Lewis Latimer, African-American inventor

Lewis Howard Latimer, born September 4, 1848 in Chelsea Massachusetts, was an African-American inventor.  On February 10, 1874, he was granted a patent with Charles Brown for an improved toilet system for railroad cars called the Water Closet for Railroad Cars.  (U.S. Patent 147,363).

In 1879, Latimer went on to draft drawings necessary for Alexander Graham Bell's telephone. In 1881, he invented a light bulb with a carbon filament to improve Thomas Edison's original work.  Latimer received a patent in 1882 for the process of manufacturing carbons.  He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for his work on electric filament manufacturing techniques.