Editorial
Front Page - Friday, February 26, 2010
Gadget Girl
Famous black inventors
Misty S. Brown
Did you know there are at least 29 special commemorations for the month of February? These run the gamut of Chocolate Lover’s Month or Creative Romance Month (which is appropriate, considering Valentine’s Day is in February) and National Boost-Your-Self-Esteem Month (I guess to encourage you along the path toward fulfilling those New Years’ resolutions) to National Dental Month (to combat all those chocolate-lovers running amok, I suppose) and Return Shopping Carts to the Supermarket Month (you’ve got me here).
But the commemoration we hear about most often is Black History Month. In honor of Black History Month, I would like to highlight a few famous black inventors whose products are still in use today.
George Washington Carver
Take George Washington Carver, for instance. If you grew up eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in your sack lunch like I did, you have probably used one of his 300 peanut-product inventions.
Carver was born at the end of the Civil War and took a strong interest in plants at a very young age. While serving as Director of Agriculture at Tuskegee Institute, he devised methods of crop rotation, showing farmers how to rotate cotton or tobacco with peanuts and other legumes from year to year.
The crop rotation system worked so well, that he and other farmers ended up with a surplus of peanuts, which could quickly rot in overflowing warehouses. Because of his interest in agriculture, Carver experimented with the excess peanuts and devised more than 300 products that could be developed from the peanut, including ink, facial cream, shampoo, soap, and yes, even peanut butter.
George Crum
Then there is George Crum who was working as a chef in the summer of 1853 when he accidentally invented the potato chip.
As the story goes, an unhappy patron sent a plate of French-fried potatoes back to the kitchen because they were too thick and soft. Wanting to teach the picky person a lesson, Crum spitefully made a potato dish quite the opposite — he sliced a new batch of potatoes very thin and fried them until they were hard and crunchy, topping them off with lots of salt. To his and the patron’s surprise, the dish was a hit and a new snack was born.
Years later, Crum opened a restaurant and featured the potato chip on each table, and we still see this snack in use everywhere today.
Lonnie Johnson
Arkansas summers are disgustingly hot and humid, but we have Lonnie Johnson to thank for an invention that helps keep us cooled down — the Super Soaker squirt gun. The uber-intelligent Johnson has a long list of credentials, awards and patents, but his invention of the Super Soaker is what enabled him to be named into the Inventor Hall of Fame in 2000.
In 1982 Johnson was experimenting with a heat pump that used water instead of Freon. The experimentation ended up with a stream of water shooting across his bathroom into the tub, leading directly to the concept of the Power Drencher, which is the precursor to the Super Soaker. In 1989 the Super Soaker was licensed to Larami Corporation (now Hasbro), and two years later it became the number one selling toy in the United States, with sales nearing $1 billion.
Garrett Morgan
Traffic is a pain in the behind, no matter how long your morning commute. Imagine how much more painful it would be if Garrett Morgan had not invented the traffic signal.
Born in the last quarter of the 19th century to former slaves, Morgan obtained an education through just the sixth-grade level. Despite this, Morgan was a hard worker, skilled entrepreneur and possessed an innate mechanical mind that helped him solve problems. He had several accomplishments in his early adulthood including starting his own business, establishing a newspaper and inventing and patenting the first chemical hair straightener and gas mask.
The traffic signal was conceptualized after Morgan witnessed an accident on a roadway and decided that a device was needed to keep vehicles and pedestrians safe from collisions. In 1923 he received a patent for his traffic signal that would stand on a corner and tell vehicles and pedestrians whether they should stop or go, and he eventually sold the rights to General Electric.
Carver, Crum, Johnson and Morgan have all had a significant impact on our present-day lives and deserve the recognition this month brings. To learn about other famous black inventors, visit www.blackinventor .com.
Submissions
Have a gadget you would like to put to the Gadget Girl test or an idea for a story? Send an e-mail to me at misty@dailydata.com.
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