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Negro Inventors

[[image - black & white etching of Granville T. Woods]]
[[caption]] Granville T. Woods [[/caption]]

GRANVILLE T. WOODS
1856-1910
Inventor

During his lifetime, Granville T. Woods obtained some 50 patents, including one for an incubator which was the forerunner of present machines capable of hatching 50,000 eggs at a time.

Born in Columbus, Ohio on April 23, 1856, Woods attended school until he was 10. He was first employed in a machine shop, and continued to improve his mechanical aptitude by working on a railroad in 1872, in a rolling mill in 1874 and, later, by studying mechanical engineering at college. In 1878, Woods became an engineer aboard the Ironsides, a British steamer and, within two years, was handling a steam locomotive on the D & S Railroad.

In 1887, he patented the most advanced of his many inventions—the Synchronous Multiplex Railway Telegraph. This device was designed "for the purpose of averting accidents by keeping each train informed of the whereabouts of the one immediately ahead or following it, in communicating with stations from moving trains; and in promoting general, social and commercial intercourse."

Woods marketed this product, as well as the others which followed it, through his own company. A perusal of the patent files in Washington, D.C. shows Woods to have been an extremely prolific inventor, as well as a highly important one. In the 20-year span between 1879 and 1899, no less than 23 separate inventions bear his name. In 1887 alone, he registered seven separate inventions with the Patent Office, all of them connected with the ingenious railway communications system he devised.

Woods died in New York City on January 30, 1910.

[[image - photo of busts of three African-American men: Norbert Rillieux, Lewis Howard Latimer, and Benjamin Banneker]]

Norbert Rillieux developed a fast, inexpensive method of refining sugar cane in 1846 and, many years later, sugar beets as well. Before this time sugar was a luxury for the very few because it was manufactured by a slow, expensive process. Because of Rillieux, sugar became inexpensive enough to make all our lives a little sweeter.

Lewis Howard Latimer, son of an escaped slave, became an electrical engineer and an inventor. He executed the drawings and helped prepare the applications for the telephone patents of Alexander Graham Bell. But his major contribution to science was his invention of a method for making carbon filament in an incandescent lamp, which he patented. Eventually, he became a noted aide to Thomas Edison and one of the Edison Pioneers. Today, a school in Brooklyn, New York, bears his name. 

Benjamin Banneker, grandson of a slave, became a prominent surveyor, mathematician and astronomer. When Major L'Enfant, the original architect of Washington, D.C., packed up and quit, the job was turned over to Banneker, who had transcribed the Major's plans. So Banneker played a key role in selecting the sites for the White House, the Treasury and the Capitol. In an era when most American blacks were slaves. Banneker proved that, as free men, Negroes too could make significant contributions to a new nation.

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