A Brief History on African Americans in Science and Invention

By Cedric Michael Stroud

Anyone who has attempted to do original research on the history of African Americans in the field of science and invention has probably experienced frustration and fascination at the same time.

Frustration that so little has been written in the history books about the scientific contributions of Black people to the world, that most people falsely assume that the race has no intellectual capacities.

Fascination comes in finding that not only have persons of African descent been participants in scientific discovery and development but have been major contributors to the technological progress of the United States of America and the world!

Africans were brought to this country as slave labor primarily to work on the farm plantations. However, many of these Africans brought technical skills such as iron-smelting and woodworking. In South Carolina, Africans brought agricultural, boat-building, and navigational experience with them that enabled them to help make Charlestonbecome a major city for shipping of goods.

Some cures for diseases were developed in the United States based on the knowledge shared by some African slaves. Papan was a slave who is credited with showing his master that tobacco placed on a rattlesnake bite absorbs the poison. Onesimus showed his master, Cotton Mather of Boston, Massachusetts, the process for inoculation. Inoculation requires putting a small amount of the germs of a disease into the body in order to build up an immunity to prevent the full sickness. An understanding of the power of various herbs in maintaining good health was also common among the African slaves.

By law, slaves were considered property, so they could not own property. Slaves were not permitted the rights of citizens, so a patent, that is legal protection of an invention, was not allowed for a slave. The master could not get a patent for his slave since the law required that the person who created the invention was the only one who could obtain the patent. Because of these laws, most of the inventions by African Americans before the 1900's may never be known, at least officially.

Cyrus McCormack, for instance, credited his slave, Jo Anderson with helping to invent the cotton reaper. It was heavily rumored during his day that the cotton gin for which Eli Whitney received a patent that was actually invented by a slave. Lunsford Lane of North Carolina invented a pipe for cooling the smoke as it passed through the pipe. He and his father were able to purchase their freedom from their master based on the sales of this invention and a secret formula used in the tobacco for the pipe.

The late Henry E. Baker, a patent examiner at the U.S. Patent Office from 1877 to the 1920s, stated in his book, “The Colored Inventor: A Record of Fifty Years”: “It is of common knowledge that in the South, prior to the War of the Rebellion, the burden of her industries, mechanical as well as agricultural, fell upon the colored population. They formed the great majority of her mechanics and skilled artisans as well as of her ordinary laborers, and from this class of workmen came a great variety of the ordinary mechanical appliances the invention of which grew directly out of the problems presented by their daily employment”.

Only two records of the more than 6 million patent records at the U.S. Patent Office identify the race of the inventor. Both belonged to Henry Blair of Glenross, Maryland; one for a cotton planter in 1834 and another for a corn planter in 1836. The earliest U.S.patent known to have been received by an African American was by Thomas L. Jennings of New Yorkon March 3, 1821 for a process of treating clothes (dry cleaning).

These were not the only known early 19th Century inventors of African descent. Benjamin Banneker invented the first working clock in America. It was made entirely of wood and it lasted for twenty years. Robert Benjamin Lewis of Maine invented an oakum-picking machine that appeared to have had some commercial success. James Forten of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, prospered from his invention of an apparatus for managing the sails of a sailboat.

Norbert Rillieux of Louisiana revolutionized the sugar industry with his invention of the evaporating pan. As the sugar cane was being heated, the evaporating pan would separate the liquid from the sugar cane in order to leave dry crystals. This process was safer for the slaves who had to lift the big, heavy, hot pots. The price of table sugar was lowered greatly and became commonly available world-wide.

Henry Boyd of Ohio established a business where he sold beds of his own invention. His beds sold well, but eventually he had to close his businesses as a result of the financial difficulties he experienced at the hands of arsonists who kept setting fire to his buildings.

In 1893, Representative George Washington Murray, an African American serving in the U.S. Congress for the State of South Carolina, submitted a list of “colored inventors” into the Congressional Record. Murray was provided this list from an employee, presumably Baker, of the Patent Office. It included eight inventions of Murray’s, all relating to agriculture.

The Patent Office made two official attempts to collect information on African American inventors. The first inquiry was made on behalf of the U.S. Commission to the Paris Exposition of 1900. The second inquiry was for the Pennsylvania Commission conducting the Emancipation Exposition at Philadelphia in 1913. Several thousands of letters were sent to patent lawyers, manufacturing firms, newspapers, and prominent African Americans, asking them to inform the Commissioner of Patents of any “authentic instances” of which they were aware.

Baker handled the responsibility of reading the thousands of letters in response to the inquiries. He sorted the letters and recorded and verified the information when possible. Baker also would write back to some of the persons to get additional information. As a result of his research, Baker uncovered the following facts:

1) A very large number of African American inventors went as far as consulting patent lawyers about obtaining patents, but had to discontinue their pursuit because they lacked the necessary funds;

2) Many African-American inventors had obtained patents for their inventions, but their patent attorneys “were unable to provide sufficient data to identify the cases specifically, inasmuch as they had kept no identifying record of the same;

3) Many African American inventors had their patents taken out by their attorneys so that their identities would not be revealed, because due to racism, it would probably negatively affect the commercial value of their inventions.

4) More than 1,000 patents were fully identified by the name of inventor, the date the patent was awarded, the patent number, and the title of the invention, as those belonging to African Americans. Baker emphasized “These patents represent inventions in nearly every branch of the industrial arts, in domestic devices, in mechanical appliances, in electricity through all its wide range of uses, in engineering skill and in chemical compounds. The fact is made quite clear that the names obtained were necessarily only a fractional part of the number granted patents.”

The first to develop a certain type of invention is significant, but the improvements on an invention can be just as important or in some cases, more so. For instance, there were shoe-making machines that attached the sole and heel, but it wasn’t until Jan Matzeliger’s shoe-lasting machine that an entire shoe could be made by automation.

What is most important to know, is that no race of people has all the intelligence in its members. God has created us all in His image, with certain abilities, talents, and gifts designed to help us help one another. In spite of hardships and obstacles placed before them, people of African heritage have contributed significantly to the scientific and technological development of this world.