AN ILLUSTRATION SHOWING THE MODELS MADE BY MATZELIGER TO ILLUSTRATE
HIS INVENTIONS IN SHOE MACHINES.]
Another prosperous business growing out of the inventions of a colored
man is The Ripley Foundry and Machine Company, of Ripley, Ohio,
established by John P. Parker. He obtained several patents on his
inventions, one being a "screw for Tobacco Presses," patented in
September, 1884, and another for a similar device patented in May,
1885. Mr. Parker set up a shop in Ripley for the manufacture of his
presses, and the business proved successful from the first. The small
shop grew into a large foundry where upwards of 25 men were constantly
employed. It was owned and managed by Mr. Parker till his death. The
factory is still being operated, and on the business lines originated
by the founder, but the ownership has passed from the Parker family.
Another business, the development of which is due in large measure to
the inventions of a colored man, Elijah McCoy, is that of making
automatic lubricators for machinery. Mr. McCoy is regarded as a
pioneer inventor in that line. He completed and patented his first
lubricating cup in 1872. Since then he has patented both in this
country and abroad nearly fifty different inventions relating
principally to the art of automatic lubrication machinery, but
including also a considerable variety of other devices. His
lubricating cup was at one time in quite general use on the
locomotives of the leading railways of the Northwest, on the steamers
of the Great Lakes, and in up-to-date factories throughout the
country. He is still living in Detroit, Michigan, and still adding new
inventions to his already lengthy list.
In completing and patenting upwards of 50 different inventions
Granville T. Woods, late of New York, appears to have surpassed every
other colored inventor in the number and variety of his inventions.
His inventive record began in 1884 in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he then
resided, and continued without interruption for over a quarter of a
century. He passed away January 30, 1910, in the city of New York,
where he had carried on his business for several years immediately
preceding. While his inventions relate principally to electricity, the
list also includes such as a steam boiler furnace, the subject of his
first patent, obtained in June, 1884; an amusement apparatus,
December, 1899; an incubator, August, 1900; and automatic airbrakes,
in 1902, 1903, and 1905. His inventions in telegraphy include several
patents for transmitting messages between moving trains, also a number
of other transmitters. He patented fifteen inventions for electric
railways, and as many more various devices for electrical control and
distribution.
In the earlier stages of his career as a successful inventor he
organized the Woods Electric Company, of Cincinnati, Ohio. This
company took over by assignment many of his earlier patents; but as
his reputation in the scientific world grew apace, and his inventions
began to multiply in number and value, he seems to have found a ready
market for them with some of the largest and most prosperous technical
and scientific corporations in the United States. The official records
of the United States Patent Office show that many of his patents were
assigned to such companies as the General Electric Company, of New
York, some to the Westinghouse Air Brake Company, of Pennsylvania,
others to the American Bell Telephone Company, of Boston, and still
others to the American Engineering Company, of New York. So far as the
writer is aware there is no inventor of the colored race whose
creative genius has covered quite so wide a field as that of Granville
T. Woods, nor one whose achievements have attracted more universal
attention and favorable comment from technical and scientific journals
both in this country and abroad.
Granville Woods' brother, Lyates Woods, is credited with uniting with
Granville in the joint invention of several machines. Most of these
consisted of electrical apparatuses, but two of them seem to have been
of sufficient importance to attract the attention of such corporations
as the Westinghouse Electric Company, of Pennsylvania. Patents No.
775,825, of March 29, 1904, and No. 795,243, of July 18, 1905, both
for railway brakes, were assigned by the Woods brothers to this
company. The record shows that the American Bell Telephone Company
purchased Woods' patent No. 315,386, granted April 7, 1885, for the
latter's invention of an apparatus for transmitting messages by
electricity. The same inventor sold to the General Electric Company,
of New York, his patent No. 667,110, of January 29, 1901, on his
invention for electric railways.
We should mention here also two other inventors of importance in the
line of appliances for musical instruments, Mr. J. H. Dickinson and
his son S. L. Dickinson, both of New Jersey. They have been granted
more than a dozen patents for their appliances, mostly in the line of
devices connected with the player piano machinery. They are still
engaged in the business of inventing, and both are holding responsible
and lucrative positions with first-class music corporations.
The inventions of W. B. Purvis, of Philadelphia, in machinery for
making paper bags are reported to be responsible for much of the great
improvement made in that art; and his patents, more than a dozen in
number on that subject alone, are said to have brought him good
financial returns. Many of them are recorded as having been sold to
the Union Paper Bag Company, of New York.
Another instance is that of an invention capable of playing an
important part in the cotton raising industry. This was a
cotton-picking machine covered by two patents granted to A. P. Albert,
a native Louisiana Creole. Mr. Albert invented a second machine which
is said to have the merit of perfect practicability, a feat not easy
of accomplishment in that class of machinery. Special significance is
attached to this case because of the inventor's experience in putting
through his application for a patent. He was obliged to appeal from
the adverse decision of the principal examiner to the Board of
Examiners-In-Chief, a body of highly trained legal and technical
experts appointed to pass upon the legal and mechanical merits of an
invention turned down by the primary examiners. Albert appeared before
this Board in his own defense with a brief prepared entirely by
himself, and won his case through his thorough painstaking
presentation of all the legal and technical points involved. Mr.
Albert is a graduate of the Law Department of Howard University in
Washington, and is connected with the United States Civil Service as
an examiner in the Pension Office.
Other colored men in the Departmental Civil Service at Washington have
obtained patents for valuable inventions. W. A. Lavalette patented two
printing presses, Shelby J. Davidson a mechanical tabulator and adding
machine, Robert A. Pelham a pasting machine, Andrew F. Hilyer two hot
air register attachments; and Andrew D. Washington a shoe horn. Nearly
a dozen patents have been granted Benjamin F. Jackson, of
Massachusetts, on his inventions. These consisted of a heating
apparatus, a matrix drying apparatus, a gas burner, an electrotyper's
furnace, a steam boiler, a trolley wheel controller, a tank signal,
and a hydrocarbon burner system.
It is not generally known that Frederick J. Loudin, who brought fame
and fortune to one of the leading Negro universities in the South by
carrying the Fisk Jubilee Troupe of Singers on several successful
concert tours around the world, is also entitled to a place on the
list of Negro inventors. He obtained two patents for his inventions,
one for a fastener for the meeting rails of sashes, December, 1893,
and the other a key fastener in January, 1894. Several colored
inventors have also applied their inventive skill to solving the
problem of aerial navigation, with the result that some of them have
been granted patents for their inventions in airships. Among these are
J. F. Pickering, of Haiti, February 20, 1900; James Smith, California,
October, 1912; W. G. Madison, Iowa, December, 1912; and J. E. Whooter,
Missouri, 2 patents, October 30 and November 3, 1914. It has been
reported that the invention in automatic car coupling covered by the
patent to Andrew J. Beard, of Alabama, dated November 23, 1897, was
sold by the patentee to a New York car company, for more than fifty
thousand dollars. This same patentee has obtained patents on more than
a half dozen other inventions, mostly in the same line.
Willie H. Johnson, of Texas, obtained several patents on his
inventions, two of them being for an appliance for overcoming "dead
center" in motion; one for a compound engine, and another for a water
boiler. Joseph Lee, a colored hotel keeper, of Boston, completed and
patented three inventions in dough-kneading machines, and is reported
as having succeeded in creating a considerable market for them in the
bread-making industry in New England. Brinay Smartt, of Tennessee,
made inventions in reversing valve gears, and received several patents
on them in 1905, 1906, 1909, 1911 and 1913.
The path of the inventor is not always an easy one. The experiences of
many of them often lie along paths that seem like the proverbial "way
of the transgressor." This was fitly exemplified in the case of Henry
A. Bowman, a colored inventor in Worcester, Massachusetts, who devised
and patented a new method of making flags. After he had established a
paying business on his invention, the information came to him that a
New York rival was using the same invention and "cutting" his
business. Bowman brought suit for infringement, but, as he informed
the writer, the suit went against him on a legal technicality, and
being unable to carry the case through the appellate tribunals, the
destruction of his business followed.
One inventor, J. W. Benton, of Kentucky, completed an invention of a
derrick for hoisting, and being without sufficient means to travel to
Washington to look after the patent, he packed the model in a grip,
and walked from Kentucky to Washington in order to save carfare. He
obtained his patent, October 2, 1900.
One other instance in which the inventor regards his experience as one
of special hardship is the case of E. A. Robinson of Chicago. He
obtained several patents for his inventions, among which are an
electric railway trolley, September 19, 1893; casting composite and
other car wheels, November 23, 1897; a trolley wheel, March 22, 1898;
a railway switch, September 17, 1907; and a rail, May 5, 1908. He
regards the second patent as covering his most valuable invention. He
says that this was infringed on by two large corporations, the
American Car and Foundry Company, and the Chicago City Railway
Company. He endeavored to stop them by litigation, but the court
proceedings in the case[21] appear to reveal some rather discouraging
aspects of a fight waged between a powerless inventor on the one side
and two powerful corporations on the other. So far as is known, the
case is still pending.
These instances of hardships, however, in the lot of inventors are in
no sense peculiar to colored inventors. They merely form a part of the
hard struggle always present in our American life--the struggle for
the mighty dollar; and in the field of invention as elsewhere the race
is not always to the swift. A man may be the first to conceive a new
idea, the first to translate that idea into tangible, practical form
and reduce it to a patent, but often that "slip betwixt the cup and
the lip" leaves him the last to get any reward for his inventive
genius.
Because of the very many interesting instances at hand the temptation
is very great to extend this enumeration beyond the intended limits of
this article by specific references to the large number of colored men
and women who in many lands and other days have given unmistakable
evidence of really superior scientific and technical ability. But this
temptation the writer must resist. Let it suffice to say that the
citations already given show conclusively that the color of a man's
skin has not yet entirely succeeded in barring his admission to the
domain of science, nor in placing upon his brow the stamp of
intellectual inferiority.