On This Day in the Old West: September 13

 On this Friday the 13^th, let’s consider a little-known historical figure: a Black man who helped create the light bulb we’re all familiar with today. Lewis Howard Latimer was born September 4, 1848 to fugitive slaves in Chelsea, Massachusetts. After an “impoverished and turbulent” childhood, Latimer, at fifteen, lied about his age and enlisted in the Union Navy. He served on the USS Massasoit until the end of the Civil War and remained an active patriot for the rest of his life.

In 1865, Latimer was hired in Boston as an office boy for Crosby, Halstead, and Gould, Solicitors of American and Foreign Patents. He became intrigued with mechanical drawing and taught himself the skills he would for this career. His diary from the time reports that he “looked over the draftsman’s shoulder, to see how he used his instruments.” He also studied instruction books and purchased his own drafting instruments. Latimer’s tenacity paid off and soon he was assisting with drawings until, at the age of 18, he became the company’s principal draftsman, a position he would hold for the next ten years. His “office boy” job paid $3 a week. By the time he was promoted to head draftsman in 1872, he was making $20. In today’s money, that’s the equivalent of moving from around $55 a week to around $485.

Keep in mind that slavery was still legal at this time. Latimer’s employers considered him worthy of such pay, and they continued to offer constant raises and promotions throughout his employment. In 1874, Latimer patented (with Charles Brown) an updated passenger train toilet system and he drew the blueprints for Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone in 1876.

Three years later, Latimer was hired at US Electric Lighting Company, owned by Hiram Maxim, a major competitor of Thomas Edison. It was while working there that, on September 13, 1881, that Latimer created a way to make the carbon filament in a light bulb more durable by encasing it in cardboard. He went on to patent the process for efficiently manufacturing the carbon filament in 1882. “His invention made incandescent lighting practical and affordable and was also longer lasting than earlier filaments.”

In 1883 Thomas Edison invited Latimer to join his company, where he “soon became their lead patent investigator and part of Edison’s inner circle.”  In 1918 Latimer became the only Black founding member of the Edison Pioneers, a group of former Edison employees who had worked closely with the great inventor in his early years. They were “a select mix of talented engineers, chemists, inventors, draftsman, lawyers, entrepreneurs, and industrialists—some of the greatest minds in early electrical technology, all in one room, all working together for one man.”

Your characters would probably never have heard of Lewis Latimer, but they would have seen the fruits of his labor: an efficient, longer-lasting incandescent bulb that made electrical lighting practical and inexpensive.

J.E.S. Hays
www.jeshays.com
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