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| Garrett A. Morgan, born to former slaves in the post-bellum South, designed an improved gas mask. |
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| Mr. Morgan after putting his invention into practice in 1916, when he helped rescue injured workers from a tunnel after an explosion under Lake Erie. |
By Claudio E. Cabrera and Julia Jacobs
Black inventors’ paths to securing a patent in the
United States have historically been jammed with obstacles.
Before
the abolition of slavery, the United States Patent and Trademark Office excluded slaves from owning patents. Because slaves
themselves were considered property, they could not own property.
After
the Civil War, black inventors faced widespread and virulent racism from white
institutions that doubted their ingenuity and stood in the way of their
success, Rayvon Fouché wrote in “Black Inventors in the Age of Segregation.”
Black Americans had limited opportunities to receive technical
training, Mr. Fouché wrote. And professional organizations that were often
vital for making business connections did not allow black people in their
ranks.
Still, many black inventors have overcome these obstacles to secure their own patents - though the marketing of those products brought further challenges. With Black History Month nearing its end, we looked back at seven such innovators.
Garrett Morgan: The inventor of an early gas mask
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| Garrett A. Morgan’s patent application for his gas mask included an illustration of a man breathing through tubes that dangle low to the ground, where smoke is less likely to linger. |
Born in the 1870s to former slaves
in the post-bellum South, Garrett A. Morgan had only six years of formal
education. During his
teenage years in Cincinnati, he worked and paid for his own tutor. Mr. Morgan went on to
patent inventions like a hair relaxer, a traffic signal system and his famed
gas mask.
Because smoke rises during a fire, leaving
more breathable air closer to the ground, Mr. Morgan created a hood with a
mouthpiece attached to tubes that dangled near one’s feet. His patent, approved in 1914, called it a “breathing device.”
Mr.
Morgan created his own firm to sell the product, staging
demonstrations of the mask across the country. He put the mask into practice in
1916 after a natural gas explosion in an underground work site
beneath Lake Erie. Mr. Morgan and others entered the gas-filled tunnel wearing
the mask, rescuing two men and recovering four bodies.
Marie Van Brittan Brown: A pioneer in home security
In the late 1960s, Marie Van Brittan Brown, who worked as a nurse,
patented a invention that became a technological precursor to the modern home
security system.
She
worked with her husband, Albert L. Brown, an electronics technician. Ms. Brown said at the time that
the couple, who lived in Jamaica, Queens, developed the system as a protective
measure against crime in their area and that they planned to install it in
their home.
The
system included a camera at the front door and a video receiver resembling a
small television set, as well as a speaker and a microphone that allowed the
homeowner to communicate with outside visitors. It also had a “radio-controlled
lock” that could be unbolted by the house’s occupants and an alarm to alert a
guard at a security station, the patent application said.
Lonnie Johnson: The father of the Super Soaker
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| Lonnie G. Johnson created the design for what would one day be called the Super Soaker. Sales for the toy reached $200 million in 1992. |
One day in 1982, Lonnie G. Johnson, an aerospace engineer who
grew up in Mobile, Ala., was at home working on an ambitious idea:
He wanted to create a refrigerator that ran on water, rather than
ozone-layer-depleting chemicals.
While
tinkering in the bathroom with some vinyl tubing and a homemade metal nozzle,
Mr. Johnson made a discovery that led him to create one of the world’s most
popular toys: the Super Soaker. Instead of the simple water pump used in squirt
guns at the time, Mr. Johnson’s design used a large air pump to
create a more powerful stream.
The
patent was approved in 1986, and a few years later, it was snapped up by the
Larami Corporation, a water gun manufacturer. That company was later acquired
by Hasbro, and sales for the toy reached $200 million in 1992, according to Mr. Johnson’s
research and development company.
Mary Beatrice Kenner: The designer of a device to make periods more tolerable
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| Mary Beatrice Kenner designed this sanitary belt in an effort to help women manage their periods. The belt could be adjusted to fit women of different sizes. |
Before there were tampon commercials promising an easier period,
there was Mary Beatrice Kenner, an inventor who wanted to make old-fashioned
sanitary belts more comfortable for women.
Ms.
Kenner wrote in her 1954 patent application that her
belt, which was meant to keep menstrual pads in place, eliminates “chafing and
irritation normally caused by devices of this class” and could be adjusted to
fit women of different sizes.
According to a book on
20th-century inventors, Ms. Kenner was approached by a company
hoping to market her idea, but once it found out she was black, its “interest
dropped.”
Ms.
Kenner, who at one point ran a flower business, continued to invent things that
made life more convenient for people, wrote Patricia Carter Sluby, a former primary
patent examiner for the Patent and Trademark Office. Those inventions
included an improved design for a toilet paper holder and an attachment to a walker for people with
disabilities that featured a tray and a pocket for carrying their belongings.
Charles Drew: The doctor with a way to transport blood
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| Dr. Charles R. Drew created a device that could preserve donated blood for transfusions. He patented the invention during World War II, a time when there was a desperate need for blood donations. |
Before Dr.
Charles R. Drew invented a way to preserve donated blood in the late 1930s,
transfusions needed to happen within a few minutes or hours after the
blood left the donor’s veins. Early in World War II, there was a desperate need
for donated blood, and refrigeration methods could not preserve blood long
enough.
As
Dr. Drew explained in his patent application, filed in 1939,
human blood disintegrates over time, in part because of the diffusion of
potassium from the blood cells to the blood plasma. His invention aimed to
separate the cells and plasma using a container with a reservoir on bottom and
top and a slender neck in between.
After
he patented the device, with the help of Dr. John Scudder, Dr. Drew became
a leader of the Red Cross blood bank in the United States and was responsible
for the Army and the Navy’s blood collection.
Patricia Bath: A doctor who revolutionized cataract surgery
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| Dr. Patricia Bath, who invented a more efficient way to remove cataracts, in 2017. In the 1980s, she discovered how to use a laser to correct the condition. |
When Dr.
Patricia Bath had her “eureka” moment with a tool to fix cataracts in the
1980s, her supervisor was skeptical. By that point, she was used to being
treated differently from her male counterparts in ophthalmology.
“I
explained to the director what I had achieved, and he said: ‘You didn’t do
that. That’s impossible,’” Dr. Bath said in an interview with Time.
She had discovered
how to remove cataracts using a laser, making the surgery less invasive and
more efficient. Her invention, which was patented in 1988 and would
ultimately be called the Laserphaco probe, could eliminate cataracts — a
clouding of the lens that can cause blindness — with a one-millimeter insertion
into the patient’s eye.
During her training, Dr. Bath, who grew up in Harlem,
documented racial disparities in access to eye care and worked throughout her
career to make ophthalmic care more widely accessible.
Dennis Weatherby: The chemist behind Cascade
While
working as an engineer at Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati,
Dennis Weatherby made an important contribution to a time-consuming
task that Americans are all too familiar with dishwashing.
At
the time, detergents would often stain dishes and the inside of automatic
dishwashers, which had become common in American homes in the 1970s. After
discovering a chemical solution for the problem along with his partner, Brian
J. Roselle, Dr. Weatherby filed a patent application in
March 1987, and it was granted by the end of the year.
Dr.
Weatherby’s yellow detergent used nonstaining dyes that could maintain their
color when in the presence of chlorine bleach, serving as the basis for the
famous lemon-scented Cascade detergent.
