Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
This list of African-American inventors and scientists documents many of the African-Americans who have invented a multitude of items or made discoveries in the course of their lives. These have ranged from practical everyday devices to applications and scientific discoveries in diverse fields, including physics, biology, math, and medicine.
Granville Tailer Woods (April 23, 1856 – January 30, 1910) was an American inventor who held more than 50 patents in the United States. [1] He was the first African American mechanical and electrical engineer after the Civil War. [2] Self-taught, he concentrated most of his work on trains and streetcars.
Lewis Howard Latimer (September 4, 1848 – December 11, 1928) was an American inventor and patent draftsman. His inventions included an evaporative air conditioner, an improved process for manufacturing carbon filaments for electric light bulbs, and an improved toilet system for railroad cars.
William B. Purvis (12 August 1838 – 10 August 1914) [1] was an African-American inventor and businessman who received multiple patents in the late 19th-century. His inventions included improvements on paper bags, an updated fountain pen design, improvement to the hand stamp, and a close-conduit electric railway system.
Russian engineer Pavel Yablochkov invented the electric carbon arc lamp. 1876: Scottish inventor Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone. 1877: American inventor Thomas Edison invented the phonograph. 1877: German industrialist Werner von Siemens developed a primitive loudspeaker. 1878: First electric street lighting in Paris, France 1878
Nonetheless, African-American men and women made important contributions to the Manhattan Project during World War II. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] At the time, their work was shrouded in secrecy, intentionally compartmentalized and decontextualized so that almost no one knew the purpose or intended use of what they were doing.
Otis Boykin was born on August 29, 1920, in Dallas, Texas. [2] [3] His father, Walter B. Boykin, was a carpenter, and later became a preacher.His mother, Sarah, was a maid, who died of heart failure when Otis was a year old.
Grand Rapids Electric Light & Power Company, established in March 1880 by William T. Powers and others, began operation of the world's first commercial central station hydroelectric power plant, Saturday, July 24, 1880, getting power from Wolverine Chair and Furniture Company's water turbine. It operated a 16-light Brush electric dynamo ...