I have no idea what it would be like to have a practical thought pattern. Luckily there are people who are practical. The world would be a terrifying place if it was on people like me to build useful things.
Garrett Morgan was born in 1877 in Paris, KY. He was an incredibly practical man!
His parents were freemen, meaning that at one time they had been enslaved. They worked their own farm.
Garrett was meant to be attending school as a child, but he spent lots of time working on his parent's farm instead of putting in his class time.
By the time he was a teenager, he still only had a basic elementary school education.
He left Kentucky and moved to Cincinnati, OH to find work.
His first job was working as a handyman for a wealthy landowner. It was what he knew, after all. He used some of his wages to pay for a tutor so he could continue his education.
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I could find no information about how he switched from doing odd jobs around a farm to working in tailor shops fixing sewing machines, but somehow he made that swap. Potentially it was more stable work.
In either case, he was not only practical but very mechanically minded. Repairing sewing machines gave him ideas about how he could improve the mechanisms. He made several changes to the sewing machines and patented his improvements.
His success at selling his improved machines gave him cash enough to open his own sewing machine repair business. He married a woman who had once been a seamstress, and they expanded their business to include tailoring.
The opening of his tailor shop made his fortune, but not because he and his wife were so good at making clothes. It had to do with his very practical brain.
Garrett continued to tinker with machines. At one point, he noticed that a wool garment had been scorched because the sewing machine needle moved so fast it caused friction that actually burned the material. Apparently, this was not uncommon.
Garret's thought was that he could come up with a solution to put on the needle that would cut down on the friction. He tried several solutions. One of the successful solutions had an odd side effect. It made the wool smooth and flat.
What could you do with such a solution? Anyone?
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He experimented on the neighbor's dog - hopefully with their full consent. When the cream straightened the dog's hair but did it no damage, he tried it on himself.
It worked.
He immediately patented, packaged and sold it as a product for African Americans to straighten hair. He also created and patented a hot comb that could be used to press hair.
So, from tailoring to hair creams, he became a wealthy man.
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Being financially independent meant that he didn't have to work in his shop. He could tinker on his own time with whatever took his fancy.
In 1912 he created and patented something called a "safety hood". It was a device you could wear over your head that would keep you safe if you should find yourself in a toxic environment. Yes, it was the precursor and basic design of a gas mask.
He founded a company called The National Safety Device Company, and he marketed his device all over the country. He hired a white actor to pretend he'd designed the device. Garrett would pose as a First Nation person from Canada called Big Chief Mason. He would build a noxious fire inside a tent, go inside and stay for twenty minutes before emerging unscathed.
The device was a hit.
It was adopted by fire departments all over the country and saved many lives.
Before Garrett's invention, most devices that were supposedly safe were bulky, didn't work well and were hard to use. The Safety Hood was the answer to a desperate need.
In 1914 Garrett Morgan's Safety Hood was awarded a gold medal at the International Association of Fire Chiefs.
I have seen articles that claim that the United States Government used the plan for his gas mask during WWI, but this appears to be false. The army used a device created by a Newfoundlander named Cluny Macpherson that was invented in 1915.
On July 25th, 1916, workers were building a tunnel under Lake Erie when they hit a pocket of natural gas. There was an explosion. The workers were trapped under the rubble. Two rescue attempts were made, but the rescuers did not emerge.
One of the firemen who had seen a demonstration of Morgan's device called him in the middle of the night desperate for help. He begged him to come down to the site of the disaster with as many of his hoods as he could get hold of.
Garrett arrived in his pajamas with his brother and a number of hoods. The firemen were skeptical of the device, so Garrett and Frank went in alone. They not only rescued the survivors but went back in and retrieved the bodies until the tunnel became too unsafe.
Strangely, this caused a drop in sales of the safety hood. The national press covered the rescue. It was revealed that a black man had created the apparatus and people became immediately suspicious of it. Not only that, the newspapers were loathe to continue to give him credit and began to write him out of the history of what had happened. The credit for the rescue was given to others.
So, wealthy, clever and an unsung hero.
Practical brains don't care if you already have lots of notches in your belt. They just keep on going.
In 1922, Garrett saw a horrific accident between one of the new automobiles and a horse carriage. He was the first black man in Cincinnati to own a car, and he was concerned that the streets weren't safe. Traffic lights had started appearing in 1913, and he felt they were inadequate.
The Answer? He designed a better one.
In 1923 he patented a new design for traffic lights. This was not the first three-color system, nor was it the first street light, but it was a big improvement over the existing systems. His new system was adopted across America, in Canada and Britain.
Eventually, he sold the patent to General Electric for forty thousand dollars.
Oh, and he also founded and ran a newspaper, co-founded the Cleveland Organization for Colored Men, and gave to historically black colleges.
There was more, of course, but you get the idea.
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| Garrett Morgan |
Garret A. Morgan -
From sewing machines and hair cream to the precursor of the gas mask and streetlights, he was master of everything he turned his hand to.
Celebrate Black History!
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