black history...garret augustus morgan (1877 - 1963)
Garrett Augustus Morgan lived a long and very full life! He was truly gifted and didn’t just contribute one invention that helped people and saved lives, he invented at least two!
Nearly everything about his life is extraordinary, starting off with his family. He was one of 11 kids born to Sydney and Elizabeth Morgan, who were both former slaves. He was born in 1877 in Paris Kentucky, but wasted no time in furthering his chances in life.
When he was 14 he moved himself north to Cincinnati in Ohio, then on to Cleveland. He worked as a handyman to make ends meet and paid for his own tutor to teach him English grammar.
In 1895 he went to work as a sewing machine repair man for a clothing manufacturer, which proved a really good move as news spread fast about how brilliant he was at his work. By 1907 he had his own sewing machine equipment and repair shop and this he added to by 1909 with his own tailoring business employing 34 people and using machines he had designed and built himself. He had also married Mary Anne Hassek, and they went on to have three sons together.
Some, maybe most, inventions are the result of an observant person experiencing a happy accident and knowing what to do with the result. Garrett’s first was when he had invented a fluid to lubricate sewing machine needles. He wiped some of the fluid onto a piece of pony-fur cloth. When he returned to his workshop later the fur was standing up!
He deduced that the fluid had straightened the hair, and decided to try the ‘straightener’ out on his neighbour’s dog, an Airedale. All Over!
Guess what happened?
He successfully marketed the product he called G.A. Morgan Hair Refining Cream, and added yet another string to his bow.
In 1912 he invented a safety hood, or as he called it a ‘Breathing Device’. Stylish it wasn’t …..
….in fact if you wanted to look like you came from another planet this was the way to go about it. It was a great invention and worked, but because of the racism rife in the USA at the time he couldn’t sell it as a black inventor. He would dress as an American Indian, and call himself Big Chief Mason to don the hood and stand in a smoke filled space for twenty minutes, demonstrating the effectiveness of the device. Imagine how this must have made a great inventor feel.
In 1916 a tragedy unfolded in a tunnel under Lake Erie. The tunnel filled with smoke and poisonous gases trapping 32 workers underground. Garrett and his brother Frank were relaxing at home nearby when someone at the scene remembered about his brilliant invention. Garrett, Frank and a couple of others donned the device and successfully rescued some of the workers who would have otherwise perished. So now Garrett was a national hero and his masks went on to save thousands of lives in the First World War. Orders increased for the masks from Fire and Police Departments but this was 1916 remember, attitudes towards African Americans had not changed that much! His identity as a black inventor had been revealed by his heroism.
Luckily for Morgan not all his customers were so dumb!
The thing Garrett is most famous for however is his patenting the first automatic traffic signal. To see how good an invention this really was, first let's look back to how things were before...
The car had caught on in a big way in the USA with Ford making his early motor cars easily available. These however had to share the roads with horse drawn vehicles and bicycles. At busy city intersections a man was employed to change the signals by hand from stop to go, with no in between stage. As you can imagine, with a man in charge the timing was er….erratic! Also the time from go to stop was INSTANT so what you got was…..
Anyway, in the early 1920’s Garrett witnessed a horrible accident right in front of him where a horse had to be put down, and he immediately set out to develop a safer alternative.
His traffic signal was automatic, making it very consistent and it had a general stop position where all the roads had to stop – allowing pedestrians to cross safely.
He must have saved hundreds, if not thousands, of lives with this invention.
He was much honoured in his own lifetime and lived to be 86. He had developed many products and many companies, making a lot of money, but never forgot his fellow African Americans still suffered discrimination and prejudice. He set up a Newspaper for African Americans, served as treasurer of the Cleveland Association of Coloured Men and ran as a candidate for Cleveland City Council.
His contribution to the world of safety was almost incalculable with his ‘gas mask’ and his traffic signals, and now every time you are waiting to cross at the lights on foot or in a car, you have Garrett to thank for the idea of safely stopping the traffic for you!
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