Glenn Vance

Elijah McCoy, Lewis Latimer and Granville Woods: African-American Inventors of the 19th Century — Part 6 — How They Made a Difference and Conclusion

Each of the men dis­cussed in this paper made a rather remark­able con­tri­bu­tion to the sci­en­tific pur­suits, some more last­ing than oth­ers. McCoy’s inven­tion has prob­a­bly been the one with the longest-lasting sig­nif­i­cance. As was true then, if you don’t lubri­cate an engine it will quit work­ing from the fric­tion. All engines, whether they are auto­mo­bile, air­plane or boat, must be lubri­cated in order to remain func­tional. McCoy’s drip cup became the basis for the self-lubricating engines of mod­ern times.

Woods’ Syn­chro­nous Mul­ti­plex Rail­way Tele­graph brought effi­ciency and safety to rail travel at a time when train col­li­sions could be com­mon. With the inven­tion of the tele­phone and fur­ther advance­ments in com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­ogy, the tele­graph became an anti­quated means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Although obso­lete on its own, his inven­tion was one of a seri­ous of steps into a wider world of com­mu­ni­ca­tion that we use today.

Latimer’s inven­tion set the stan­dard in light­ing for the 25 years that fol­lowed. In 1904 William D. Coolidge devel­oped an incan­des­cent light bulb using tung­sten, which extended bulb life far beyond Latimer’s carbon-filament bulb.

As Henry E. Baker  said in The Col­ored Amer­i­can, “It is held to be of far greater impor­tance to show that the Negro as a race has actu­ally accom­plished very much of value in the line of inven­tion, and thus to show how much in error are those who con­stantly assert that the Negro has made no last­ing con­tri­bu­tion to the civ­i­liza­tion of the age. These facts ought clearly to show that under favor­able envi­ron­ment the Negro is capa­ble of per­form­ing his whole duty in the work of mankind, whether it be till­ing the earth with his hoe or advanc­ing the world by his thought.”¹⁸

Sum­mary

McCoy, Woods and Latimer all came from mod­est begin­nings. They didn’t have priv­i­lege but they worked hard and found recog­ni­tion, and some a mea­sure of fame, from what they were able to do with ideas, sweat and inge­nu­ity. Their abil­ity to rise up paved the way for mod­ern African-American inven­tors like Dr. Mark Dean, who was instru­men­tal in the cre­ation of the per­sonal com­puter for IBM; George Alcorn, the devel­oper of the imag­ing x-ray spec­trom­e­ter; and the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist Dr. Shirley Jack­son, who helped cre­ate the portable fax, the touch tone tele­phone and the fiber optic cables used to pro­vide clear over­seas tele­phone calls.¹⁹ As pio­neers in their sci­en­tific fields, these men broke past the bar­ri­ers of their time to open up new avenues for oth­ers that would follow.

Next time, what hap­pened after I got the paper back.

21. June 2010 by Glenn Vance
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