Celebrating Black Inventors

By MC1 Kegan E. Kay, NAS Sigonella Public Affairs

What if I challenged you to go one full day of not using any products created by Black Americans? Could you do it?

It would mean a whole day without using your cell phone. Does your internet come through a fiber optic cable? Then say good bye to internet access. Does your home have an alarm system? Nope, can’t use that either. What type of light bulbs are you using? If they’re not LED or tungsten, then get comfortable with the dark as you won’t be able to use your lightbulbs.

Traditionally when we celebrate heritage months such as Black History Month (aka -- African American History Month), we focus squarely on the military contributions which makes sense; this is a naval air base, and Black Americans have a long and distinguished history in the United States military. They have defended our nation with loyalty, honor, and patriotism, during peace time and in every war fought by or within the United States and account for approximately 228 thousand of today’s military service members.

However, the impacts to our way of life and overall technological advances are often not mentioned in these celebrations.

Dr. Shirley Jackson was a theoretical physicist whose experiments were responsible for the development of the touch-tone telephone, caller ID and the fiber optic cable. Can you imagine going back to life without these developments? I’ve worked with people who have never known life before the existence of cell phones and know many people who struggle to go even an hour without checking their phones. I, myself, would probably cry at the loss of high-speed internet, and I know I was super excited when fiber optic internet was made available in my small home town.

Going back to lights and lightbulbs, I know f that Edison comes to mind first for most people, but it was inventor and draftsman Lewis Latimer who improved upon Edison’s design by creating a carbon filament. His filament design increased the durability of the lightbulb as well as made it more accessible and affordable. After all, what use is a lightbulb if lasts less than a day? On another note, Latimer also served two years in the U.S. Navy as a Landsman onboard the Union Navy steamer USS Massasoit during the Civil War. Go Navy!

Ever given blood? What about needing or knowing someone who needed a blood transfusion? You can thank Charles Drew, a physician and medical researcher, who was largely responsible for the creation of the large scale blood and plasma banks. Here was a man who was looking out for humanity at large but still had to contend with policy that only allowed white people to give blood to white people and Black people to Black people, a policy that wasn’t changed until the 1950s.

Do you love watching videos online? Yup, online videos were made possible by Lisa Gelobter, who was heavily involved with the development of Shockwave.

If we want to look at someone’s contributions that are a little bit more impactful in regards to the military, we can talk about Otis Boykin, an inventor who created the electronic resistor used in controlled missiles and many other electronic devices.

I’m not even scratching the surface of the many contributions by Black Americans. I haven’t even covered Voice-over Internet Protocol (VoIP), gas masks, the threelight traffic signal, walkers, toilet-tissue holders, ironing boards, refrigerated trucks, air conditioning, and even super soaker squirt guns.

If we were to lose anything and everything that has resulted from the ideas, experiments, and creations of Black Americans, our way of life today would not be recognizable.