JULY 2021
Vol 1 Issue 2
BLACK INVENTIONS YOU PROBABLY DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT
We don't often hear of black inventors. In fact, before making a conscious effort to find out more about them, I was rather oblivious to the number of things made by black inventors. Without them, though, our lives would be very different.
Theme: Household appliances: Lewis Latimer was an American Inventor who lived from 1848 to 1928. His parents were runaway slaves who migrated to Massachusetts from Virginia. He served in the US Navy during the US Civil War and received an honourable discharge in 1865. In 1876, Latimer was asked to design the necessary drawing to patent an invention by a teacher for deaf children, who just so happened to be Alexander Graham Bell. We have all heard of Thomas Edison and how he created the lightbulb, but there were many faults with the lightbulb, one being that it had a very short life-span. Latimer devised a way of allowing the bulb to have a long life span by encasing the filament within an cardboard envelope which prevented the carbon from breaking, which also made the bulbs less expensive and more efficient. This enabled electric lighting to be installed within homes and throughout streets. Later on in life, Latimer was even hired by Thomas Edison, working as the chief draftsman and and patent expert. Alice. H. Parker was born in 1895 and is most well known for her patented invention of central heating using natural gas. Very little is known about her life, although we do know that she attended classes at Howard University Academy (connected to Howard University) and received a certificate with honours. Her design allowed for cool air to be drawn into a furnace, which then heated the air through a heat exchanger, and was released through ducts to individual parts of the house. Although the idea of central heating was around before her invention, Parker's invention was particularly special because instead of coal or wood which had been used before, it used natural gas. Her initial designs were never used, but her ideas that natural gas and ducts could be used to distribute warm air to different parts of the house were a major step towards the central heating that we know today. John Standard was born in 1868 and was from Newark, New Jersey. Much like Alice Parker, there is not much known about his life. However, Standard made considerable improvements to kitchen appliances that would enable a change in the way people cooked and stored their food. According to AAREG, in his patent for the refrigerator, Standard declared, "this invention relates to improvements in refrigerators, and it consisted of certain novel arrangements and combinations of parts." At the time, fridges were non-electrical and unpowered. Standard's refrigerator (1891) used a manually filled ice chamber for chilling and was granted a patent on June 14 1891. He also went on to receive a patent for improvements made to the standard stove cooker. - Beth Akinkoye 4RAW
