Celebrating Black History: Inventions – Top Five

Let’s face it, our world wouldn’t exist without light bulbs. I mean, it’d be pretty hard to check Facebook by candlelight. Thanks to Lewis Latimer, we’ve been able to easily enjoy electric light for over a century. Latimer worked both with Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell (in fact, Bell probably couldn’t have patented the telephone without Latimer’s help), and devised a way to quickly and effectively make reliable carbon filaments (which consists of the two little poles and wire in the light bulb). This way, they could make light bulbs more easily and cheaply, which allowed more people to get electricity.

The modern gas mask comes straight from a guy named Garrett Morgan, who first invented the mask to help firefighters deal with smoke inhalation while saving fire victims. Morgan actually demonstrated the mask himself and saved a bunch of people from a tunnel fire in Cleveland. He was wildly successful selling the mask around the country, and the U.S. government even used a version of his gas mask to protect soldiers from poison gas in World War I. So if you’re ever saved by a firefighter, you probably have Garrett Morgan to thank for allowing the firefighter to breathe through the smoke.

You’ve got this guy to thank for pretty much every fun moment you can remember with water during the summer. Johnson was a rocket scientist and worked for the government for a while, and developed the technology behind the Super Soaker in his basement while working on something much more important and scientific. After perfecting the whole powerful-enough-to-make-your-friends-fall-over water system, he patented the Super Soaker in 1991, and the water guns were the highest selling toys in the early 1990s.

Charles Drew was a doctor in the mid 20th century who helped save millions of lives during World War II. He was recruited by the “Blood for Britain” program in 1940 to help transport blood in a safe and easy way overseas to help soldiers, so he made a central place for people to give blood, and then figured out a way to transport blood plasma to Europe. Eventually, Drew’s system was the basis for the Red Cross Blood Bank, so if you’ve ever given or gotten blood, thank this guy.

Probably the pinnacle of American invention, as far as food goes, it doesn’t get any more patriotic than the potato chip. Crum was a chef at Moon’s Lake House in Saratoga, New York in the late 19th century. The story goes that someone requested French fries as a side dish, but sent them back when Crum didn’t slice them thin enough. So, in a typical “I’ll show this jerk” American fashion, Crum sliced them super thin and thus potato chips were born. Crum made enough money from the chips to eventually open up his own restaurant, and they were made a national snack by Herman Lay around the 1920s.