Celebrating Black History Month: Frederick McKinley Jones, first African-American to receive the National Medal of Technology

Frederick McKinley Jones, born May 17, 1893 in Cincinnati, Ohio was an African-American inventor who was awarded 61 patents over his lifetime.  After serving in the US Army during WWI, he went back to Hallock, Minnesota where he had lived prior to the war.  He built a transmitter for the new radio station in town.  He invented a device to combine sound with motion pictures, since the local theater could not afford the speaker system for "talkies". 

About 1938, Jones designed a cooling system that made it possible to transport food over long distances without spoiling.  These portable cooling units were used during WWII to preserve blood, medicine and food which were so important to army hospitals.  His inventions helped save thousands of lives.

He passed away in Minneapolis in 1961.  In 1977, he was inducted into the Minnesota Inventors Hall of Fame.  In 1991, then President George Bush awarded the National Medal of Technology to Joseph Numero, who hired Jones in 1930, and Fred Jones, making Jones the first African-American to win the award.

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.

Celebrating Black History Month - Thomas L. Jennings, first African-American to be awarded U.S. patent

Thomas L. Jennings, born in 1791 to a free family in New York City, is the first African-American to be awarded a United States Patent.  Jennings owned and operated a tailoring and dry-cleaning business.  He developed a process known as "dry scouring" for cleaning clothes.  He applied for and received a patent for the process in March 1821. 

His patent was controversial when granted because patents were supposed to be granted to the master of a slave, but Jennings was free-born so he was able to retain all of his rights.  He used his early earnings to buy his wife and some children out of slavery.

Jennings was also an activist for African-American rights.  His daughter Elizabeth was forcibly removed from a 'whites only' streetcar, so he organized a movement against racial segregation in public transportation.  Elizabeth won her case in 1855, but it wasn't until a decade later that New York City streetcar companies ceased segregation.