Black innovators revolutionizing America with patents, saving lives and improving the quality of life. Without patent protection – black inventors would never be appreciated and left defenseless.

One of the most prolific inventors of the golden age was Granville T. Woods, a black man who received more than 60 patents in the fields of electricity and telegraphic communications.37 Born in 1856, Woods viewed invention as both a means to acquire capital to invest in future projects and a way to implement the modernization of America.38 Woods was self-taught, having left school at age 10 to work in an Ohio machine shop. He studied electronics, machining, and blacksmithing while working full time.39 Woods received his first patent in 1884 for a steam boiler furnace.40 He would travel between Cincinnati and New York inventing, raising venture capital for, and selling his inventions.41 His inventions competed with those of highly regarded inventors like Alexander Graham Bell, Lucius Phelps, and Thomas Edison.42 His patented inventions included technology that improved trains, streetcars, and electrical communication systems, among other things. Upon his death in 1910, Woods had realized his goal of helping to modernize America. Along with Woods, Lewis Latimer was a premier black inventor at the end of the nineteenth century. Born free in 1848 to parents who had run away from slavery, Latimer learned about patent drafting as an office boy in a Massachusetts patent law firm.43 Latimer rose in the firm’s ranks to become a draftsman—a professional rarity for blacks during this period—and over time he not only helped others but also developed several of his own inventions.44 His inventions included toilet systems for railroad cards, carbon filament light bulbs, and the now-common threaded light bulb socket, among other things.45 Latimer worked with some of America’s most well-known inventors, including Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison.46 His work helped make electric lights possible both in private homes and in public, and this transformed the way Americans lived and worked at that time.47 As the twentieth century was beginning, other black inventors were helping to make Americans safer with their inventions. Garrett Morgan, for example, received patents for what would become the gas mask in 1914 48 and the traffic signal in 1923.49 Morgan was formally recognized by the city of Cleveland in 1916 when he saved the lives of 24 men trapped in a tunnel beneath Lake Erie while wearing the mask he invented.50 His traffic signal invention became an indispensable component of both national and global traffic models.51 Morgan’s traffic signal invention is the grandfather of the type we use today.

Charles Richard Drew, a doctor in Washington, D.C., helped make medical gains by inventing a method for preserving human blood in 1942.52 Drew’s work saved thousands of lives during World War II, and he became the founding medical director of the United States Red Cross Blood Bank.53

In the home safety space, Marie Van Brittan Brown invented the first home security system and obtained a patent for it in 1969.54 She invented the system because police did not respond quickly to emergencies happening in her New York neighborhood.55 Brown’s invention allowed a homeowner to see a person at the door and hear their voice on a television set that was controlled by a wireless radio system.56 Some iterations of Brown’s home security are still being used in the twenty-first century.

These examples show that black American inventors have developed technology that not only advanced American technology but also saved and continues to save lives. These inventors improved our health and safety. Other black inventors created new ways for people around the world to enjoy themselves.

Modern black inventors are also at the forefront of cutting-edge technology that improves both the public and private sectors. In the private sector, Marian Rogers Croak currently holds more than 135 patents primarily related to voice-over Internet protocol (VoIP) technology, which paved the way for VoIP systems like Skype and Google Hangouts.63 Croak spent more than 30 years at AT&T, where she managed 2,000+ engineers and led AT&T to replace wired communications with Internet protocol.64 She currently serves as a vice president of engineering at Google, where she is responsible for Google’s global expansion of Internet access in emerging markets and elsewhere.65

Another such inventor is Janet Emerson Bashen, the founder and current CEO of Bashen Corporation, who became the first black woman to obtain an American software patent in 2006.66 Early in her career, Bashen worked in the insurance industry and noticed that the industry needed private, third parties to investigate Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) claims. She founded a company to meet this need and then coinvented a way to securely store information about EEO investigations.67 Bashen went on to develop new software that facilitates EEO complaints and other Title VII adherence.68

In the public sector, there are esteemed inventors such as Dr. Robert G. Bryant of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Bryant has served as an inventor or coinventor on dozens of issued patents related to polymers and advanced composites during his career at NASA.69 His work is highly regarded in the industry, having received numerous accolades over the years, including R&D 100 awards in 1994 and 1996 and the NASA Government Invention of the Year Award in 2006.70

These black American inventors illustrate the range of benefits associated with encouraging innovation and access to the American patent system. Those who can participate in it not only receive the personal right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling their invention, but they also receive a gateway to revolutionizing our country with their innovations.