How Did Black Inventors Change America?

Black American inventors have given us everything from secure mailboxes and practical lightbulbs to gas masks and blood banks. Learn more in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/inventions/10-inventions-by-african-americans.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey Brainstuff, Lauren
voc Obam Here. It should go without saying that Black
Americans have been responsible for countless cultural and technological inventions,
but our history books haven't always featured them. So today,
let's talk about a few. In eighteen eighty five, Sarah

(00:26):
Good became the first black woman to receive a US patent.
A Good was born into slavery in eighteen fifty, and
after the Civil War, she moved to Chicago and opened
a furniture store. It was there that she came up
with an idea that would bring more urban residents with
limited space into her shop. She invented a folding cabinet bed.
By day, the piece of furniture could be used as

(00:48):
a desk, but at night it could be folded out
into a bed. A Good received her patent thirty years
before the Murphy bed, a hideaway bed that folds into
a wall. A. Next up, let's talk about another ingenious
everyday device, the protective mailbox. When you drop a letter
in a public mailbox, you expected to reach its destination

(01:09):
safely and in relatively good condition. But before eighteen ninety one,
people using the US mail couldn't make those kind of assumptions.
Public mailboxes were semi open, which made it easy for
thieves to steal mail and for elements like rain and
snow to damaged letters. But Philip P. Downing changed that
with a mailbox design that featured an outer door and

(01:31):
an inner safety door. OH. When the outer door was open,
safety door remained closed so that the mail was safe
from thieves and inclement weather. OH. When the outer door
was closed, the safety door would open so that the
deposited mail would join the other letters in the box.
This safety device allowed mailboxes to be set up everywhere
near people's homes. Born into a middle class family in

(01:53):
eighteen fifty seven, Downing had a long career as a
clerk with the custom House in Boston. He also save
patterns for a device to quickly moistened envelopes and one
for operating street railway switches. On the subject of railways,
let's talk about the multiplex telegraph. This was a device
and the time before radios, that made it possible for

(02:15):
railway workers to communicate among moving trains. This was a
game changer because, okay, imagine trying to land an airplane
at a busy airport, air traffic controllers on the ground
can communicate with pilots to prevent collisions. In eighteen eighty seven,
one Granville T. Woods invented the multiplex telegraph to allow

(02:37):
train dispatchers to do the same thing. It allowed dispatchers
and engineers at various stations to communicate with moving trains
via telegraph. Conductors could also communicate with their counterparts on
other trains. Prior to eighteen eighty seven, train collisions were
a huge problem, but Woods device helped make train travel
much safer. Woods was sued by Thomas Edison, who claimed

(03:01):
that he was the inventor of the multiplex telegraph, but
Woods won that lawsuit. Eventually, Edison asked him to work
at his Edison Electric Light Company, but Woods declined, preferring
to remain independent and went on to receive other patents
for his train and communications work. Speaking of Edison, he

(03:22):
often gets the credit for inventing the light bulb, but
in reality, dozens of inventors were working to perfect commercial
lighting at the time. One of those inventors was Lewis Latimer.
Latimer was hired as an office assistant at a law
firm that specialized in patents in eighteen sixty eight. A
while there, he taught himself mechanical drawing and was promoted

(03:42):
to draftsmen. In his time at the firm, he worked
with Alexander Graham Bell on the plans for the telephone.
Latimer then began his foray into the world of light.
Edison was working on a light bulb model with the
paper filament, the filament being the thin fiber that the
electric current heat to produce light in an incandescent bulb.

(04:03):
In Edison's experiments, the paper would burn down in fifteen
minutes or so, rendering the bulb unrealistic for practical use.
It was Latimer who created a light bulb model that
used a carbon filament, which lasted longer and made light
bulb production cheaper. Because of Latimer's innovation, more people could
afford to light their homes. But let's talk about a

(04:27):
medical inventor. In nineteen thirty eight, Charles Richard Drew went
to Columbia University to earn a Doctor of Medical Science degree.
A while there, he became interested in researching the preservation
of blood. Drew discovered a method of separating red blood
cells from plasma, and then storing the two components separately.

(04:47):
This new process allowed blood to be stored for more
than a week, which was the maximum at that time.
The ability to store blood, or as Drew called it,
banking the blood for longer periods of time, meant that
more people could receive transfusions. Drew documented these findings in
a paper that led to the first blood bank. After

(05:08):
completing his studies, Drew began working with the military. A first,
he supervised blood preservation and delivery in World War Two,
and then was appointed director of the first American Red
Cross Blood Bank, a blood bank for the US Army
and Navy that served as the model for blood banks today. However,
Drew resigned his position because the armed forces insisted on

(05:29):
separating blood by race and providing white soldiers with blood
donated from white people. Drew knew that race made no
difference in blood composition, and he felt that this unnecessary
segregation would cost too many lives. Drew returned to private
life as a surgeon and medical professor at Howard University.

(05:50):
Our final inventor today is Garrett Morgan. A. While working
as a handyman at the turn of the twentieth century,
he taught himself how sewing machines worked, so that he
could open up his own shop, selling new machines and
repairing broken ones. While trying to find a fluid that
would polish needles, Morgan happened upon a formula that would
straighten human hair. His first invention useful, but he would

(06:15):
go on to save countless lives with his next two inventions.
Troubled by how many firefighters were killed by smoke on
the job, Morgan developed what he called the safety hood.
This hood, which went over the head, featured tubes connected
to wet sponges that filtered out smoke and provided cleaner
air to the wearer. This primitive gas mask became a

(06:37):
sensation in nineteen sixteen when Morgan ran to the scene
of a tunnel explosion and used his invention to help
save the lives of trapped workers. Later, in nineteen twenty three,
as automobiles were becoming more common, Morgan noticed the collisions
were all too common on chaotic streets, and so he
developed an early prototype, the three position traffic signal. Today's

(07:02):
episode is based on the article Top ten Inventions by
African Americans on HowStuffWorks dot Com, written by Molly Edmunds.
The Brainstuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with HowStuffWorks
dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more
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