Ok, the latest outbreak of black racism was caused by the same reason as always: Worldwide, in demographics, blacks and whites are on equal par - each at 13% of the global population, always have been, and for the same length of time in history. Yet, barring writing and gunpowder which were invented by the Chinese, and Hindus coming up with so-called 'Arabic' numerals and the concept of zero, whites have invented EVERYTHING in the world, while blacks have invented NOTHING. That simple and eternal truth is what still butt-hurts them - always has, always will.
From
HERE: (I just hope the damn internal links work!)
Black Invention Myths
Air Brake --
Air Conditioner --
Airship --
Automatic Coupler --
Automatic Lubricator --
Automatic Transmission --
Bicycle Frame --
Blood Bank --
Blood Plasma --
Cellular Phone --
Clock or Watch --
Clothes Dryer -- Cotton Gin -- Dustpan --
Egg Beater --
Electric Trolley --
Elevator --
Fastest Computer --
Filament for Light Bulb --
Fire Escape --
Fire Extinguisher --
Food Additives --
Fountain Pen --
Gas Mask --
George W. Carver --
Golf Tee --
Hairbrush --
Halogen Lamp --
Handstamp --
Heart Surgery --
Heating Furnace --
Horseshoe --
Ice Cream --
Ironing Board --
Laser Cataract Surgery --
Lawn Mower --
Lawn Sprinkler --
Lubricator --
Mailbox --
Mop --
Paper Punch --
Peanut Butter --
Pencil Sharpener --
Perm Machine --
Postmark/Cancel Mach. --
Printing Press --
Propeller for Ship --
Railway Telegraph --
"Real McCoy" --
Refrigerator --
Refrigerated Truck --
Rotary Engine --
Screw Socket --
Smallpox Vaccine --
Smokestack --
Steam Boiler --
Street Sweeper --
Supercharger --
Third rail --
Toilet --
Toilet (Railcar) --
Traffic Signal --
Tricycle --
Turn Signals --
Typewriter --
Washington DC city plan --
Traffic Signal
Invented by Garrett A. Morgan in 1923? Nope.
The first known traffic signal appeared in London in 1868 near the
Houses of Parliament. Designed by JP Knight, it featured two semaphore
arms and two gas lamps. The earliest electric traffic lights
include Lester Wire's two-color version set up in Salt Lake City circa
1912, James Hoge's system (US patent #1,251,666) installed in Cleveland
by the American Traffic Signal Company in 1914, and William Potts' 4-way
red-yellow-green lights introduced in Detroit beginning in 1920. New
York City traffic towers began flashing three-color signals also in
1920.
Garrett Morgan's cross-shaped, crank-operated semaphore was not among
the first half-hundred patented traffic signals, nor was it "automatic"
as is sometimes claimed, nor did it play any part in the evolution of
the modern traffic light.
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Gas Mask
Garrett Morgan in 1914? Nope.
The invention of the gas mask predates Morgan's breathing device by
several decades. Early versions were constructed by the Scottish chemist
John Stenhouse in 1854 and the physicist John Tyndall in the 1870s,
among many other inventors prior to World War I.
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Peanut Butter
George Washington Carver (who began his peanut research in 1903)? Nope.
Peanuts, which are native to the New World tropics, were mashed into
paste by Aztecs hundreds of years ago. Evidence of modern peanut butter
comes from US patent #306727 issued to Marcellus Gilmore Edson of
Montreal, Quebec in 1884, for a process of milling roasted peanuts
between heated surfaces until the peanuts reached "a fluid or semi-fluid
state." As the product cooled, it set into what Edson described as "a
consistency like that of butter, lard, or ointment." In 1890, George A.
Bayle Jr., owner of a food business in St. Louis, manufactured peanut
butter and sold it out of barrels. J.H. Kellogg, of cereal fame, secured
US patent #580787 in 1897 for his "Process of Preparing Nutmeal," which
produced a "pasty adhesive substance" that Kellogg called "nut-butter."
[return to top]
George Washington Carver
"Discovered" hundreds of new and important uses for the peanut?
Fathered the peanut industry? Revolutionized southern US agriculture? Nope.
Research by Barry Mackintosh, who served as bureau historian for the
National Park Service (which manages the G.W. Carver National Monument),
demonstrated the following:
- Most of Carver's peanut and sweet potato
creations were either unoriginal, impractical, or of uncertain
effectiveness. No product born in his laboratory was widely adopted.
- The boom years for Southern peanut production came prior to, and not as a result of, Carver's promotion of the crop.
- Carver's
work to improve regional farming practices was not of pioneering
scientific importance and had little demonstrable impact.
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Automatic Lubricator, "Real McCoy"
Elijah McCoy revolutionized industry in 1872 by inventing the first device to automatically oil machinery? Nope. The phrase "Real McCoy" arose to distinguish Elijah's inventions from cheap imitations? Nope.
The oil cup, which automatically delivers a steady trickle of
lubricant to machine parts while the machine is running, predates
McCoy's career; a description of one appears in the May 6, 1848 issue of
Scientific American. The automatic "displacement
lubricator" for steam engines was developed in 1860 by John Ramsbottom
of England, and notably improved in 1862 by James Roscoe of the same
country. The "hydrostatic" lubricator originated no later than 1871.
Variants of the phrase Real McCoy appear in Scottish literature dating back to at least 1856 — well before Elijah McCoy could have been involved.
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Blood Bank
Dr. Charles Drew in 1940? Nope.
During World War I, Dr. Oswald H. Robertson of the US army preserved
blood in a citrate-glucose solution and stored it in cooled containers
for later transfusion. This was the first use of "banked" blood. By the
mid-1930s the Russians had set up a national network of facilities for
the collection, typing, and storage of blood. Bernard Fantus, influenced
by the Russian program, established the first hospital blood bank in
the United States at Chicago's Cook County Hospital in 1937. It was
Fantus who coined the term "blood bank."
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Blood Plasma
Did Charles Drew "discover" (in about 1940) that plasma could
be separated and stored apart from the rest of the blood, thereby
revolutionizing transfusion medicine? Nope.
The possibility of using blood plasma for transfusion purposes was
known at least since 1918, when English physician Gordon R. Ward
suggested it in a medical journal. In the mid-1930s, John Elliott
advanced the idea, emphasizing plasma's advantages in shelf life and
donor-recipient compatibility, and in 1939 he and two colleagues
reported having used stored plasma in 191 transfusions. Charles Drew
was not responsible for any breakthrough scientific or medical
discovery; his main career achievement lay in supervising or
co-supervising major programs for the collection and shipment of blood
and plasma.
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Washington DC city plan
Benjamin Banneker? Nope.
Pierre-Charles L'Enfant created the layout of Washington DC. Banneker
assisted Andrew Ellicott in the survey of the federal territory, but
played no direct role in the actual planning of the city. The story of
Banneker reconstructing the city design from memory after L'Enfant ran
away with the plans (with the implication that the project would have
failed if not for Banneker) has been debunked by historians.
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Filament for Light Bulb
Lewis Latimer invented the carbon filament in 1881 or 1882? Nope.
English chemist/physicist Joseph Swan experimented with a
carbon-filament incandescent light all the way back in 1860, and by 1878
had developed a better design which he patented in Britain. On the
other side of the Atlantic, Thomas Edison developed a successful
carbon-filament bulb, receiving a patent for it (#223898) in January
1880, before Lewis Latimer did any work in electric lighting. From 1880
onward, countless patents were issued for innovations in filament design
and manufacture (Edison had over 50 of them). Neither of Latimer's two
filament-related patents in 1881 and 1882 were among them, nor did they
make the light bulb last longer, nor is there reason to believe they
were adopted outside Hiram Maxim's company where Latimer worked at the
time. (He was not hired by Edison's company until 1884, primarily as a
draftsman and an expert witness in patent litigations).
Latimer also did not come up with the first screw socket for the light bulb or the first book on electric lighting.
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Heart Surgery (first successful)
Dr. Daniel Hale Williams in 1893? Nope.
Dr. Williams repaired a wound not in the heart muscle itself, but in
the sac surrounding it, the pericardium. This operation was not the
first of its type: Henry Dalton
of St. Louis performed a nearly identical operation two years earlier,
with the patient fully recovering. Decades before that, the Spaniard
Francisco Romero carried out the first successful pericardial surgery of
any type, incising the pericardium to drain fluid compressing the
heart.
Surgery on the actual human heart muscle, and not just the
pericardium, was first successfully accomplished by Ludwig Rehn of
Germany when he repaired a wounded right ventricle in 1896. More than 50
years later came surgery on the open heart, pioneered by John Lewis, C.
Walton Lillehei (often called the "father of open heart surgery") and
John Gibbon (who invented the heart-lung machine).
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"Third Rail"
Granville Woods in 1901? Nope.
Werner von Siemens pioneered the use of an electrified third rail as a
means for powering railway vehicles when he demonstrated an
experimental electric train at the 1879 Berlin Industrial Exhibition. In
the US, English-born Leo Daft used a third-rail system to electrify the
Baltimore & Hampden lines in 1885. The first electrically powered
subway trains, which debuted in London in the autumn of 1890, likewise
drew power from a third rail.
[return to top]
Railway Telegraph
Granville Woods prevented railway accidents and saved countless
lives by inventing the train telegraph (patented in 1887), which
allowed communication to and from moving trains? Nope.
The earliest patents for train telegraphs go back to at least 1873.
Lucius Phelps was the first inventor in the field to attract widespread
notice, and the telegrams he exchanged on the New York, New Haven &
Hartford railroad in January 1885 were hailed in the Feb. 21, 1885 issue
of Scientific American as "perhaps the first ever sent to
and from a moving train." Phelps remained at the forefront in developing
the technology and by the end of 1887 already held 14 US patents on his
system. He joined a team led by Thomas Edison, who had been working on
his "grasshopper telegraph" for trains, and together they constructed on
the Lehigh Valley Railroad one of the only induction telegraph systems
ever put to commercial use. Although this telegraph was a technical
success, it fulfilled no public need, and the market for on-board train
telegraphy never took off. There is no evidence that any commercial
railway telegraph based on Granville Woods's patents was ever built.
[return to top]
Refrigerated Truck
Frederick Jones (with Joseph Numero) in 1938? Nope. Did Jones change America's eating habits by making possible the long-distance shipment of perishable foods? Nope.
Refrigerated ships and railcars had been moving perishables across
oceans and continents even before Jones was born. Trucks with
mechanically refrigerated cargo spaces appeared on the roads at least as
early as the late 1920s. Further development of truck refrigeration was
more a process of gradual evolution than radical change.
[return to top]
Air Brake / Automatic Air Brake
Granville Woods in 1904? Nope.
In 1869, a 22-year-old George Westinghouse received US patent #88929
for a brake device operated by compressed air, and in the same year
organized the Westinghouse Air Brake Company. Many of the 361 patents he
accumulated during his career were for air brake variations and
improvements, including his first "automatic" version in 1872 (US
#124404).
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Air Conditioner
Frederick Jones in 1949? Nope.
Dr. Willis Carrier built the first machine to control both the
temperature and humidity of indoor air. He received the first of many
patents in 1906 (US patent #808897, for the "Apparatus for Treating
Air"). In 1911 he published the formulae that became the scientific
basis for air conditioning design, and four years later formed the
Carrier Engineering Corporation to develop and manufacture AC systems.
[return to top]
Airship
J.F. Pickering in 1900? Nope.
French engineer Henri Giffard successfully flew a powered navigable airship in 1852. The La France
airship built by Charles Renard and Arthur Krebs in 1884 featured an
electric motor and improved steering capabilities. In 1900 Count
Ferdinand von Zeppelin's first rigid-framed dirigible took to the air.
Of the hundreds of inventors granted patents for early airship designs
and modifications, few succeeded in building or flying their craft.
There doesn't appear to be any record of a "Pickering Airship" ever
getting off the ground.
[return to top]
Automatic Railroad Car Coupler
Andrew Beard invented the "Jenny [sic] coupler" in 1897? Nope.
The Janney coupler is named for US Civil War veteran Eli H.
Janney, who in 1873 invented a device (US patent #138405) which
automatically linked together two railroad cars upon their being brought
into contact. Also known as the "knuckle coupler," Janney's invention
superseded the dangerous link-and-pin coupler and became the basis for
standard coupler design through the remainder of the millennium. Andrew
Beard's modified knuckle coupler was just one of approximately eight
thousand coupler variations patented by 1900.
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Automatic Transmission/Gearshift
Richard Spikes in 1932? Nope.
The first automatic-transmission automobile to enter the market was
designed by the Sturtevant brothers of Massachusetts in 1904. US Patent
#766551 was the first of several patents on their gearshift mechanism.
Automatic transmission technology continued to develop, spawning
hundreds of patents and numerous experimental units; but because of
cost, reliability issues and an initial lack of demand, several decades
passed before vehicles with automatic transmission became common on the
roads.
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Bicycle Frame
Isaac R. Johnson in 1899? Nope.
Comte Mede de Sivrac and Karl von Sauerbronn built primitive versions
of the bicycle in 1791 and 1816 respectively. The frame of John
Starley's 1885 "safety bicycle" resembled that of a modern bicycle.
[return to top]
Cellular Phone
Henry T. Sampson in 1971? Nope.
On July 6, 1971, Sampson and co-inventor George Miley received a
patent on a "gamma electric cell" that converted a gamma ray input into
an electrical output (Among the first to do that was Bernhard Gross, US
patent #3122640, 1964). What, you ask, does gamma radiation have to do
with cellular communications technology? The answer: nothing. Some
multiculturalist pseudo-historian must have seen the words "electric"
and "cell" and thought "cell phone."
The father of the cell phone is Martin Cooper who first demonstrated the technology in 1973.
[return to top]
Clock or Watch (First in America)
Benjamin Banneker built the first American timepiece in 1753? Nope.
Abel Cottey, a Quaker clockmaker from Philadelphia, built a clock that is dated 1709 (source: Six Quaker Clockmakers,
by Edward C. Chandlee; Philadelphia, The Historical Society of
Pennsylvania, 1943). Banneker biographer Silvio Bedini further refutes
the myth:
Several watch and clockmakers were already established in
the colony [Maryland] prior to the time that Banneker made the clock.
In Annapolis alone there were at least four such craftsmen prior to
1750. Among these may be mentioned John Batterson, a watchmaker who
moved to Annapolis in 1723; James Newberry, a watch and clockmaker who
advertised in the Maryland Gazette on July 20, 1748; John
Powell, a watch and clockmaker believed to have been indentured and to
have been working in 1745; and Powell's master, William Roberts.
Silvio Bedini, The Life of Benjamin Banneker (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1999)
[return to top]
Clothes Dryer
George T. Sampson in 1892? Nope.
The "clothes-drier" described in Sampson's patent was actually a rack
for holding clothes near a stove, and was intended as an "improvement"
on similar contraptions:
My invention relates to improvements in
clothes-driers.... The object of my invention is to suspend clothing in
close relation to a stove by means of frames so constructed that they
can be readily placed in proper position and put aside when not required
for use.
US patent #476416, 1892
Nineteen years earlier, there were already over 300 US patents for such "clothes-driers" (Subject-Matter Index of Patents...1790 to 1873).
A Frenchman named Pochon in 1799 built the first known tumble dryer —
a crank-driven, rotating metal drum pierced with ventilation holes and
held over heat. Electric tumble dryers appeared in the first half of the
20th century.
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Cotton Gin: Eli Whitney? NOPE! The cotton gin is a device for removing the seeds from cotton fiber. Such machines have been around for centuries.
Eli Whitney's machine of 1794, however, was the first to clean short-staple cotton, and a single device could produce up to fifty pounds of cleaned cotton in a day.
So: NOT AN INVENTION. At most, he modified an existing one.
Dustpan
Lloyd P. Ray in 1897? Nope.
While the ultimate origin of the dustpan is lost in the mists
(dusts?) of time, at least we know that US patent #20811 for "Dust-pan"
was granted to T.E. McNeill in 1858. That was the first of about 164 US
dustpan patents predating Lloyd Ray's.
[return to top]
Egg Beater
Willie Johnson in 1884? Nope.
The hand-cranked egg beater with two intermeshed, counter-rotating
whisks was invented by Turner Williams of Providence, Rhode Island in
1870 (US Patent #103811). It was an improvement on earlier rotary egg
beaters that had only one whisk.
[return to top]
Electric Trolley
Did Granville Woods invent the electric trolley car, the
overhead wire that powers it, or the "troller" wheel that makes contact
with the trolley wire, in 1888? Nope.
Dr. Werner von Siemens demonstrated his electric trolleybus, the
Elektromote, near Berlin on April 29, 1882. The vehicle's two electric
motors collected power through contact wheels rolling atop a pair of
overhead wires. The earliest patentee of an electric trolley in the
United States appears to be Eugene Cowles (#252193 in 1881), followed by
Dr. Joseph R. Finney (#268476 in 1882) who operated an experimental
trolley car near Pittsburgh, PA in the summer of 1882. In early 1885,
John C. Henry established in Kansas City, MO, the first overhead-wire
electric transit system (New England Magazine, Apr 1891, p.192) to enter
regular service in the United States. Belgian-born Charles van Depoele,
who earned 240+ patents in electric railway technology and other
fields, set up trolley lines in several North American cities by 1887.
In February 1888, a trolley system designed by Frank Sprague began
operating in Richmond, Virginia. Sprague's system became the lasting
prototype for electric street railways in the US.
[return to top]
Elevator
Alexander Miles in 1887? Nope.
Was Miles the first to patent a self-closing shaft door? Nope.
Steam-powered hoisting devices were used in England by 1800. Elisha
Graves Otis' 1853 "safety elevator" prevented the car from falling if
the cable broke, and thus paved the way for the first commercial
passenger elevator, installed in New York City's Haughwout Department
Store in 1857. The first electric elevator appeared in Mannheim, Germany
in 1880, built by the German firm of Siemens and Halske. A self-closing
shaft door was invented by J.W. Meaker in 1874 ("Improvement in
Self-closing Hatchways," US Patent No. 147,853).
[return to top]
Fastest Computer/Computation
Was Philip Emeagwali responsible for the world's fastest
computer or computation in 1989? Did he win the "Nobel Prize of
computing"? Is he a "father of the Internet"? Nope.
The fastest performance of a computer application in 1989 was 6
billion floating point operations per second (6 Gflops), achieved by a
team from Mobil and Thinking Machines Corp. on a 64,000-processor
"Connection Machine" invented by Danny Hillis. That was almost double
the 3.1 Gflops of Emeagwali's computation. Computing's Nobel Prize
equivalent is the Turing Award, which Emeagwali has never won.
[return to top]
Fire Escape
Joseph Winters in 1878? Nope.
Winters' "fire escape" was a wagon-mounted ladder. The first such
contraption patented in the US was the work of William P. Withey, 1840
(US patent #1599). The fire escape with a "lazy-tongs" type ladder, more
similar to Winters' patent, was pioneered by Hüttman and Kornelio in
1849 (US patent #6155). One of the first fire escapes of any type was
invented in 18th-century England:
In 1784, Daniel Maseres, of England, invented a machine
called a fire escape, which, being fastened to the window, would enable
anyone to descend to the street without injury.
Benjamin Butterworth, Growth of Industrial Art, 1888
By 1888 the US had granted 1,099 patents on fire escapes of "many forms, and of every possible material" (Butterworth).
[return to top]
Fire Extinguisher
Thomas J. Martin in 1872? Nope.
In 1813, British army captain George Manby created the first known
portable fire extinguisher: a two-foot-tall copper cylinder that held 3
gallons of water and used compressed air as a propellant. One of the
earliest extinguishers to use a chemical extinguishing agent, and not
just water, was invented in 1849 by the Englishman William Henry
Phillips, who patented his "fire annihilator" in England and the United
States (US patent #7,269).
[return to top]
Food Additives, Meat Curing
Lloyd Hall "is responsible for the meat curing products,
seasonings, emulsions, bakery products, antioxidants, protein
hydrolysates, and many other products that keep our food fresh and
flavorable"? Nope. Hall "revolutionized the meatpacking industry"? Nope.
Hall introduced no major class of additive, certainly not meat curing
salts (which are ancient), protein hydrolysates (popularized by Julius
Maggi as flavor enhancers in 1886), emulsifiers and antioxidants
(lecithin, for example, was used in both roles before Lloyd Hall had any
patents in food processing). The so-called revolutionary meat curing
product marketed by Hall's employer was invented primarily by Karl Max
Seifert ; the number of Seifert's patent was printed right on the
containers. Hall's main contribution to this product was to reduce its
tendency to cake during storage.
[return to top]
Fountain Pen
W.B. Purvis in 1890? Nope.
The first reference to what seems to be a fountain pen appears in an
Arabic text from 969 AD; details of the instrument are not known. A
French "Bion" pen, dated 1702, represents the oldest fountain pen that
still survives. Later models included John Scheffer's 1819 pen, possibly
the first to be mass-produced; John Jacob Parker's "self-filling" pen
of 1832; and the famous Lewis Waterman pen of 1884 (US Patents #293545,
#307735).
[return to top]
Golf Tee
Dr. George Grant in 1899? Nope.
A small rubber platform invented by Scotsmen William Bloxsom and
Arthur Douglas was the world's first patented golf tee (British patent
#12941 of 1889). The first known tee to penetrate the ground, in
contrast to earlier tees that sat on the surface, was the peg-like
"Perfectum" patented in 1892 by Percy Ellis of England. American dentist
William Lowell introduced the most common form of tee used today, the
simple wooden peg with a flared top.
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Hairbrush
Lyda Newman in 1898? Nope.
An early US patent for a recognizably modern hairbrush went to Hugh
Rock in 1854 (US Design Patent no. D645), though surely there were
hairbrushes long before there was a US Patent Office.
The claim
that Lyda Newman's brush was the first with "synthetic bristles" is
false: her patent mentions nothing about synthetic bristles and is
concerned only with a new way of making the handle detachable from the
head. Besides, a hairbrush that included "elastic wire teeth" in
combination with natural bristles had already been patented by Samuel
Firey in 1870 (US, #106680). Nylon bristles weren't even possible until
the invention of nylon in 1935.
[return to top]
Halogen Lamp
Frederick Mosby? No
The original patent for the tungsten halogen lamp (US #2,883,571;
April 21, 1959) is recorded to and Emmett H. Wiley of General Electric.
The two had built a working prototype as early as 1953. Fred Mosby was
part of the GE team charged with developing the prototype lamp into a
marketable product, but was not responsible for the original halogen
lamp or the concept behind it.
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Hand Stamp
William Purvis in 1883? Nope.
The earliest known postal handstamp was brought into use by Henry
Bishop, Postmaster General of Great Britain, in the year 1661. The stamp
imprinted the mail with a bisected circle containing the month and the
date. THese were commonly referred to as "Bishop marks"
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Heating Furnace
Alice Parker in 1919? Nope.
In the hypocaust heating systems built by the ancient
Romans, hot air from a furnace circulated under the floor and up through
channels inside the walls, thereby distributing heat evenly around the
building. One of the most famous heating systems in recent centuries was
the iron furnace stove known as the "Franklin stove," named after its
purported originator Benjamin Franklin around 1745 AD. The US had issued
over 4000 patents for heating stoves and furnaces by 1888 (Benjamin
Butterworth, Growth of Industrial Art, 1888).
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Horseshoe
Oscar E. Brown in 1892? Nope.
Some sources on the web, if not ignorant enough to say Brown invented the first horseshoe ever,
will at least try to credit him for the first double or compound
horseshoe made of two layers: one permanently secured to the hoof, and
one auxiliary layer that can be removed and replaced when it wears out.
However, in the US there were already 39 earlier patents for horseshoes
using that same concept. The first of these was issued to J.B. Kendall
of Boston in 1861, patent #33709.
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Ice Cream
Augustus Jackson in 1832? Nope.
Flavored ices resembling sherbet were known in China in ancient
times. In Europe, sherbet-like concoctions evolved into ice cream by the
16th century, and around 1670 or so, the Café Procope in Paris offered
creamy frozen dairy desserts to the public. The first written record of
ice cream in the New World comes from a letter dated 1700, attesting
that Maryland Governor William Bladen served the treat to his guests. In
1777, the New York Gazette advertised the sale of ice cream by confectioner Philip Lenzi.
[return to top]
Ironing Board
Sarah Boone in 1892? Nope.
Of the several hundred US patents on ironing boards granted prior to
Sarah Boone's, the first three went to William Vandenburg in 1858
(patents #19390, #19883, #20231). The first American female patentee of
an ironing board is probably Sarah Mort of Dayton, Ohio, who received
patent #57170 in 1866. In 1869, Henry Soggs of Columbus, Pennsylvania
earned US patent #90966 for an ironing board resembling the modern type,
with folding legs, adjustable height, and a cover. Another nice example
of a modern-looking board was designed by J.H. Mallory in 1871, patent
#120296.
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Laser Cataract Surgery
Patricia Bath "transformed eye surgery" by inventing the first laser device to treat cataracts in 1986? Nope.
Use of lasers to treat cataracts in the eye began to develop in the
mid 1970s. M.M. Krasnov of Russia reported the first such procedure in
1975. One of the earliest US patents for laser cataract removal
(#3,982,541) was issued to Francis L'Esperance in 1976. In later years, a
number of experimenters worked independently on laser devices for
removing cataracts, including Daniel Eichenbaum, whose work became the
basis of the Paradigm Photon™ device; and Jack Dodick, whose Dodick
Laser PhotoLysis System eventually became the first laser unit to win
FDA approval for cataract removal in the United States. Still, the
majority of cataract surgeries continue to be performed using ultrasound
devices, not lasers.
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Lawn Mower
John Burr in 1899? Nope.
English engineer Edwin Budding invented the first reel-type lawn
mower (with blades arranged in a cylindrical pattern) and had it
patented in England in 1830. In 1868 the United States issued patent
#73807 to Amariah M. Hills of Connecticut, who went on to establish the
Archimedean Lawn Mower Co. in 1871. By 1888, the US Patent Office had
granted 138 patents for lawn mowers (Butterworth, Growth of Industrial Art). Doubtlessly there were even more by the time Burr got his patent in 1899.
Some website authors want Burr to have invented the first "rotary
blade" mower, with a centrally mounted spinning blade. But his patent
#624749 shows yet another twist on the old reel mower, differing in only
a few details with Budding's original.
[return to top]
Lawn Sprinkler
J. H. Smith in 1897? Elijah McCoy? Nope.
The first US patent with the title "lawn sprinkler" was issued to J.
Lessler of Buffalo, New York in 1871 (#121949). Early examples of
water-propelled, rotating lawn sprinklers were patented by J. Oswald in
1890 (#425340) and J. S. Woolsey in 1891 (#457099) among a gazillion
others.
Smith's patent shows just another rotating sprinkler, and McCoy's 1899 patent was for a turtle-shaped sprinkler.
[return to top]
Mailbox (letter drop box)
P. Downing invented the street letter drop box in 1891? Nope.
George Becket invented the private mailbox in 1892? Nope.
The US Postal Service says that "Street boxes for mail collection
began to appear in large [US] cities by 1858." They appeared in Europe
even earlier, according to historian Laurin Zilliacus:
Mail boxes as we understand them first appeared on the
streets of Belgian towns in 1848. In Paris they came two years later,
while the English received their 'pillar boxes' in 1855.
Laurin Zilliacus, Mail for the World, p. 178 (New York, J. Day Co., 1953)
From the same book (p.178), "Private mail boxes were invented in the United States in about 1860."
Eventually, letter drop boxes came equipped with inner lids to
prevent miscreants from rummaging through the mail pile. The first of
many US patents for such a purpose was granted in 1860 to John North of
Middletown, Connecticut (US Pat. #27466).
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Mop
Thomas W. Stewart in 1893? Nope.
Mops go back a long, long way before 1893. Just how long, is hard to
determine. Restricting our view to the modern era, we find that the
United States issued its first mop patent (#241) in 1837 to Jacob Howe,
called "Construction of Mop-Heads and the Mode of Securing them upon
Handles." One of the first patented mops with a built-in wringer was the
one H. & J. Morton invented in 1859 (US #24049).
The mop specified in Stewart's patent #499402 has a lever-operated
clamp for "holding the mop rags"; the lever is not a wringing mechanism
as erroneously reported on certain websites. Other inventors had already
patented mops with lever-operated clamps, one of the first being
Greenleaf Stackpole in 1869 (US Pat. #89803).
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Paper Punch (hand-held)
Charles Brooks in 1893? Nope.
Was it the first with a hinged receptacle to catch the clippings? Nope.
The first numbered US patent for a hand-held hole punch was #636,
issued to Solyman Merrick in 1838. Robert James Kellett earned the first
two US patents for a chad-catching hole punch, in 1867 (patent #65090)
and 1868 (#79232).
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Pencil Sharpener
John Lee Love in 1897? Nope.
Bernard Lassimone of Limoges, France invented one of the earliest
sharpeners, receiving French patent number 2444 in 1828. An apparent
ancestor of the 20th-century hand-cranked sharpener was patented by G.
F. Ballou in 1896 (US #556709) and marketed by the A.B. Dick Company as
the "Planetary Pencil Pointer." As the user held the pencil stationary
and turned the crank, twin milling cutters revolved around the tip of
the pencil and shaved it into a point.
Love's patent #594114 shows a variation on a different kind of
sharpener, in which one would crank the pencil itself around in a
stirring motion. An earlier device of a similar type was devised in 1888
by G.H. Courson (patent #388533), and sold under the name "President
Pencil Sharpener."
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Permanent Wave Machine (for perming hair)
Marjorie Joyner in 1928? Nope.
That would be German hairdresser Karl Ludwig Nessler (aka Charles Nestlé) no later than 1906.
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Postmarking and Canceling Machine
William Barry in 1897? Nope.
Try Pearson Hill of England, in 1857. Hill's machine marked the
postage stamp with vertical lines and postmark date. By 1892, US post
offices were using several brands of machines, including one that could
cancel, postmark, count and stack more than 20,000 pieces of mail per
hour (Marshall Cushing, Story of Our Post Office, Boston: A. M. Thayer & co., 1892, pp.189-191).
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Printing Press
W.A. Lavalette invented "the advanced printing press" in 1878? Nope.
Movable-type printing first appeared in East Asia. In Europe, around
1455, Johann Gutenberg adapted the screw press used in other trades such
as winemaking and combined it with type-metal alloy characters and
oil-based printing ink. Major advances after Gutenberg include the
cylinder printing press (c. 1811) by Frederick Koenig and Andreas Bauer,
the rotary press (1846) by Richard M. Hoe, and the web press (1865) by
William Bullock. Major advances do not include Lavalette's patent, which
was only one of 3,268 printing patents granted in the US by the year
1888 (Butterworth, Growth of Industrial Art).
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Propeller for Ship
George Tolivar or Benjamin Montgomery? Nope.
John Stevens constructed a boat with twin steam-powered propellers in
1804 in the first known application of a screw propeller for marine
propulsion. Other important pioneers in the early 1800s included Sir
Francis Pettit Smith of England, and Swedish-born ship designer John
Ericsson (US patent #588) who later designed the USS Monitor.
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Refrigerator
Thomas Elkins in 1879? John Stanard in 1891? Nope.
Oliver Evans proposed a mechanical refrigerator based on a
vapor-compression cycle in 1805 and Jacob Perkins had a working machine
built in 1834. Dr. John Gorrie created an air-cycle refrigeration system
in about 1844, which he installed in a Florida hospital. In the 1850s
Alexander Twining in the USA and James Harrison in Australia used
mechanical refrigeration to produce ice on a commercial scale. Around
the same time, the Carré brothers of France led the development of
absorption refrigeration systems.
Stanard's patent describes not a refrigeration machine, but an
old-fashioned icebox — an insulated cabinet into which ice is placed to
cool the interior. As such, it was a "refrigerator" only in the old
sense of the term, which included non-mechanical coolers. Elkins created
a similarly low-tech cooler, acknowledging in his patent #221222 that
"I am aware that chilling substances inclosed within a porous box or jar
by wetting its outer surface is an old and well-known process."
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Rotary Engine
Andrew Beard in 1892? Nope.
The Subject Matter Index of Patents Issued from the United States Patent Office from 1790 to 1873 Inclusive
lists 394 "Rotary Engine" patents from 1810-1873. The Wankel engine, a
rotary combustion engine with a four-stroke cycle, dates from 1954.
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Screw Socket for Light Bulb
Lewis Latimer? Nope.
The earliest evidence for a light bulb screw base design is a drawing
in a Thomas Edison notebook dated Sept. 11, 1880. It is not the work of
Latimer, though:
Edison's long-time associates, Edward H. Johnson and John
Ott, were principally responsible for designing fixtures in the fall of
1880. Their work resulted in the screw socket and base very much like
those widely used today.
R. Friedel and P. Israel, Edison's Electric Light: Biography of an Invention, (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1986).
The 1880 sketch of the screw socket is reproduced in the book cited above.
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Smallpox Vaccine
Onesimus the slave in 1721? Nope. Onesimus knew of variolation, an early inoculation technique practiced in several areas of the world before the discovery of vaccination.
English physician Edward Jenner developed the smallpox vaccine in
1796 after finding that the relatively innocuous cowpox virus built
immunity against the deadly smallpox. This discovery led to the eventual
eradication of endemic smallpox throughout the world. Vaccination
differs from the primitive inoculation method known as variolation,
which involved the deliberate planting of live smallpox into a healthy
person in hopes of inducing a mild form of the disease that would
provide immunity from further infection. Variolation not only was risky
to the patient but, more importantly, failed to prevent smallpox from
spreading. Known in Asia by 1000 AD, the practice reached the West via
more than one channel.
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Smokestack for Locomotives
L. Bell in 1871? Nope.
Even the first steam locomotives, such as the one built by Richard
Trevithick in 1804, were equipped with smokestacks. Later smokestacks
featured wire netting to prevent hazardous sparks from escaping. Page
115 of John H. White Jr.'s American Locomotives: An Engineering History, 1830-1880 (1997 edition) displays a composite picture showing 57 different types of spark-arresting smokestacks devised before 1860.
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Steam Boiler Furnace
Granville Woods in 1884? Nope.
The steam engine boiler is of course as old as the steam engine itself. The Subject Matter Index of Patents Issued from the United States Patent Office from 1790 to 1873 Inclusive
lists several hundred variations and improvements to the steam boiler,
including the revolutionary water-tube boiler patented in 1867 by
American inventors George Herman Babcock and Stephen Wilcox.
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Street Sweeper
Charles Brooks in 1896? Nope.
Brooks' patent was for a modified version of a common type of street
sweeper cart that had long been known, with a rotary brush that swept
refuse onto an elevator belt and into a trash bin. In the United States,
street sweepers started being patented in the 1840s, and by 1900 the
Patent Office had issued about 300 patents for such machines.
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Supercharger for Automobiles
Joseph Gammel/Gamell in 1976? Nope.
In 1885, Gottlieb Daimler received a German patent for supercharging
an internal combustion engine. Louis Renault patented a centrifugal
supercharger in France in 1902. An early supercharged racecar was built
by Lee Chadwick of Pottstown, Pennsylvania in 1908 and reportedly
reached a speed of 100 miles per hour.
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Toilet
T. Elkins in 1897? Nope.
The Minoans of Crete invented a flush toilet thousands of years ago;
however, there is probably no direct ancestral relationship between it
and the modern one that evolved primarily in England starting in the
late 16th century, when Sir John Harrington devised a flushing device
for his godmother Queen Elizabeth. In 1775 Alexander Cummings patented a
toilet in which some water remained after each flush, thereby
suppressing odors from below. The "water closet" continued to evolve,
and in 1885, Thomas Twyford provided us with a single-piece ceramic
toilet similar to the one we know today.
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Toilet for Railroad Cars
Lewis Latimer in 1874? Nope.
William E. Marsh Jr. of New Jersey took out US patent #95597 for
"Improvement in Water-closets for Railroad Cars" five years prior to
Latimer's 1874 patent with the same title. Marsh's patent specification
suggests that railroad-car water closets, i.e., toilets, were already in
use:
In the closets or privies of railroad cars, the cold and wind,
especially while the train is in motion, are very disagreeable... My
invention is to remove these objectionable features....
W. Marsh, US patent #95597, 1869
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Tricycle
M.A. Cherry in 1886? Nope.
In Germany in the year 1680 or thereabouts, paraplegic watchmaker
Stephan Farffler built his own tricycle at 22 years of age. He designed
it to be pedaled with the hands, for obvious reasons.
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Turn Signals
Richard Spikes in 1913? Nope. Did the 1913 Pierce Arrow feature Spikes' turn signals? Nope.
Electric turn signal lights were devised as early as 1907 (U.S.
Patent 912,831), but were not widely offered by major automobile
manufacturers until the late 1930s, when GM developed its own version
and made it standard on Buicks. The Pierce Arrow Museum in Buffalo, NY
denies that directional signals were offered on 1913 Pierce Arrows.
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Typewriter
L.S. Burridge & N.R. Marshman in 1885? Nope.
Henry Mill, an English engineer, was the first person to patent the
basic idea of the typewriter in 1714. The first working typewriter known
to have actually been built was the work of Pellegrino Turri of Italy
in 1808. The familiar QWERTY keyboard, developed by C. L. Sholes and C.
Glidden, reached the market in 1874. In 1878 change-case keys were added
that enabled the typing of both capital and small letters.
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A few thoughts.....
Every year during Black History Month, we get to hear about all of the
colored geniuses in our midst. We all get this crap shoved in our faces
in school, on T.V., etc.....We hear that if it weren't for black people
inventing traffic lights, we'd all be crashing at intersections. We have
to keep a straight face while they tell us that if blacks hadn't
invented elevators, we'd still be stuck on the first floor. As if white
people, intelligent enough to create, design and develop automobiles,
paved roads, and an Interstate highway system couldn't figure out how to
avoid running into each other at intersections. Or that anyone smart
enough to build skyscrapers could never figure out how to get to the top
floor without brilliant negroes inventing elevators.
Even if blacks had actually contributed to society (imagine that) by
inventing things, something tells me Western Civilization could have
managed without them, somehow. Unfortunately for the delicate feelings
of our overly-sensitive colored friends, most of what is taught as fact
in our schools and museums about their great achievements are absolutely
false. Pure fiction. White people are too afraid of being branded a
racist to actually call bullshit on these preposterous tales of black
ingenuity, so we just figure it helps the poor things feel good about
themselves to imagine that they can actually pull their weight in an
advanced technological society.
Modern blacks think that it's lame to do well in school, and they'd
rather collect welfare and demand an easy life from white taxpayers.
Back in the 1920's, for example, blacks, for the most part, knew they
had better do their best to keep up with us, and they taught their kids
that they would have to work twice as hard as white folks to get half as
far. Given their obvious intellectual shortcomings, this was a fairly
accurate outlook. Also, most of the "blacks" glorified for past
achievements are at least half white, judging by the looks of them. Some
even passed for white in our society. So with white genes and the
advantage of being raised in a white-dominated culture, it's expected
that a certain number of them would attempt to tinker around with our
technology and try their hand at inventing things. While they should be
given credit for doing their best, and even obtaining patents in some
cases, the vast majority of the technical contributions that they made
were either not very helpful or were near-replicas of things that had
been patented decades earlier by white folks.
If blacks were the geniuses that they would have us believe, where are
the African scientists, inventors and innovators? Where is the African
space program? If blacks were so intelligent, and the only reason they
don't do well in American society is because we oppress them and deny
them opportunities, you would think that in their native lands they
would be free to express their intellectual prowess without being
bothered by mean white people. Yet we see that, even as little as blacks
have contributed to society, they have only done that much in our
country, where they have all of the cultural and educational advantages
that we can share with them.
Google this stuff up yourself, and you will find that websites, museums
and probably your child's public schools repeat this crap. I was reading
one Afro-centric website that actually claimed that many black
inventors are unknown because they were slaves at the time and not given
credit for their technological prowess. Of course, if slave owners were
taking credit for their slaves' inventions, how would black people
today know it happened?
Also, even if slaves and newly-freed blacks really created all of this
stuff, that kind of screws up all of the excuses blacks make these days
for their present-day ignorance, illiteracy and general lack of ability
to make it in a modern white civilization, doesn't it? I mean, how can
you tell me that Latrelle or Shaniqua can't pass their SAT's because of a
history of racism and oppression and then turn around and say that
blacks were actually smarter and more creative when we owned them?
I'm so tired of hearing them blame slavery for everything. Look, we
brought you people here and made you do chores. Long time ago. Get over
it. And stop taking credit for inventing things you probably can't even
spell, it just makes you look silly.
Have you ever noticed the dates on the vast majority of these so-called
black inventions? Late 1800's and early 1900's for the most part. Isn't
that when schools all over America were segregated, as well as
neighborhoods and almost every other public place? Isn't that when
blacks were regularly lynched for the crimes they committed? Modern
blacks are always moaning about the Jim Crow days and how we oppressed
and excluded them, yet, on the other hand, they apparently want to claim
that there was some huge surge in black geniuses running around
inventing things. How could that be? Seems like these blacks want to
have it both ways, because they don't really understand how things work.
And if all of these alleged black inventors could achieve these great
things in the face of segregation laws and oppression, why couldn't all
of the other blacks do the same back then? No, they screamed and rioted
and claimed segregation was keeping them down, so we opened our entire
society up to them thinking they would shut up for a while and leave us
alone, but nope, somehow we are still keeping them down.
As negligible and trivial as the accomplishments of these black
"inventors" were, at least they were trying. They understood that to get
ahead, you had to ape the white race as best you could. That was back
when we actually ran things. Now you have niggers running around trying
to control their schools and neighborhoods and consequently they are at
their highest levels of illiteracy, illegitimacy and criminality since
we found them eating their grandmothers in Africa centuries ago.
As hard as it may be for American blacks to admit this, they only
achieve their highest potential in orderly, civilized societies where
they are not permitted to have any power or control whatsoever. In other
words, strong white societies. They have shown that their "talented
tenth," as W.E.B. DuBois called them, can only thrive in conditions and
environments that they could never create or maintain themselves.
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