How Did Black Inventors Change America?

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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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. 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 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 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.

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 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 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 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 podcasts from my heart Radio. Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.