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| Lewis Latimer was not only a prolific and creative inventor and brilliant technical draftsman, he was also known as a "renaissance man", or in other words, a talented all rounder. He was present at the birth of one of the most important domestic inventions and helped improve another of them to make it practical to use. Lewis’s parents had escaped slavery and were determined that their children would be born on free soil. Lewis was born in 1848. In 1857 the American Supreme Court ruled that a former slave, Dred Scott, could not be considered a free man though he lived in a free state. Soon after this ruling Lewis’s father disappeared, possibly fearing for his safety and for that of his family as he had no official papers to prove he was a free man. This left Lewis and his family struggling so in 1864 when he was only 16 he falsified his age and joined the U.S. Navy, fighting in the American Civil War. When he left he secured a job in a patent law firm. He earned $3 a week as an office boy. However, he was no ordinary office boy! He kept a close eye on the draftsmen as they worked and took in everything. The firm specialised in helping inventors protect their inventions and Lewis absorbed all that he could and studied on his own. Pretty soon he asked if he could be given a chance to show what he could do. And what he could do was draw the most accurate and exquisite technical drawings that impressed the socks off his employers. He was promoted to draftsman and then head draftsman and his wages went up to $20 a week! His drawings were very beautiful, enough to be considered works of art. Lewis was a truly creative man who not only invented and took out patents of his own, but painted, wrote poetry and plays and played the flute.  Lewis then met up with Alexander Graham Bell – recognise the name? Of course he was the first to patent the telephone! Who stayed up late into the night drawing the invention for the patent office? Lewis of course! Lucky he did stay up late too, the story goes that they got the drawings and the application for a patent to the patent office only hours before Bell’s rival. Phew!In 1880 Lewis went to work for the U.S. Electric Lighting Company. Electric lighting was in its infancy and there was much improving to be done to the invention. The company encouraged employees to make suggestions. Of course Lewis took them up on this (with knobs on!) and soon had patents of his own which helped to take the light bulb from something that only lasted 30 hours, to something much more practical and durable.  He invented the manufacturing process to turn out Carbon filaments and a cardboard casing for the filaments to last longer, as well as improved ways of connecting electricity to the filament. He was such a success in the firm, and had become such an expert in ‘electrical incandescence’ that he was asked to supervise the installation of electric street lighting in the USA, Canada and London. The next major phase of his life was when he was invited to work with Thomas Edison, a very famous inventor indeed. Edison encouraged Lewis to write his book Incandescent Electric Lighting: A Practical Description of the Edison System. Published in 1890. It was a very popular book that described how the electric light works in a way that everyone could understand. In 1918 Lewis became one of the Edison Pioneers, the only African American out of 28 employees. This was a highly prestigious group of engineers and inventors. All his life he believed that the ‘American Dream’ was an opportunity for all America’s citizens, and he backed up this belief by teaching recent immigrants the skills he had learned that had served him so well. His life is marked not just by inventive and technical success. It seems that he was much loved by all his colleagues and had a joyous personal and family life too. His friend Richard Greener, a lawyer who was the first African American to graduate from Harvard, the top American University, wrote him a letter that said: ...You are all in all, one of the most humanly human fellows I know... When he died, in 1928, the Amsterdam News said ...His work in science was an achievement and his personal life was a work of art... You can read two lovely poems by Lewis at: http://www.si.edu/lemelson/centerpieces/ilives/latimer/latimer.html So think of Lewis and his long and influential life each time you flick on a light switch. The light bulb is often used as a symbol for having an idea, and Lewis never stopped having those!
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