“We create our future, by well improving present opportunities: however few and small they be.”
Lewis Howard Latimer
Point #1
Born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, on September 4, 1848, to parents who had fled slavery. Latimer was the youngest of four children born to George and Rebecca Latimer, who had escaped from slavery in Virginia six years before his birth. Captured in Boston and brought to trial as a fugitive, George Latimer was defended by abolitionists Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison.
Point #2
Worked at Crosby and Gould patent law office. He taught himself mechanical drawing and drafting by observing the work of draftsmen at the firm. Recognizing Latimer’s talent and promise, the firm partners promoted him from office boy to draftsman. In addition to assisting others, Latimer designed a number of his own inventions, including an improved railroad car bathroom and an early air conditioning unit.
Point #3
Co-patented (with Charles W. Brown) an improved toilet system for railroad cars called the Water Closet for Railroad Cars (U.S. Patent 147,363).
In 1876, Working with Alexander Graham Bell, Latimer helped draft the patent for Bell’s design of the telephone. He was also involved in the field of incandescent lighting, a particularly competitive field, working for U.S. Electric Lighting.
In January 1881, he received a patent for “Process of Manufacturing Carbons”, an improved method for the production of carbon filaments used in lightbulbs.
“Tomorrow may be fair, however stormy the sky of today.”
Lewis Howard Latimer
Point #4
Latimer married Mary Wilson in 1873, and they had two daughters together. Emma Jeanette (June 12, 1883 –February 1978) and Louise Rebecca (April 19, 1890 – January 1963). Jeanette married Gerald Fitzherbert Norman, the first black person hired as a high school teacher in the New York City public school system,[4] and had two children: Winifred Latimer Norman (October 7, 1914 – February 4, 2014), a social worker who served as the guardian of her grandfather’s legacy; and Gerald Latimer Norman (December 22, 1911 – August 26, 1990), who became an administrative law judge.
Point #5
Lewis Howard Latimer died on December 11, 1928, in Flushing, Queens, New York. His wife, Mary, predeceased him by four years.
Works cited
Lewis Howard Latimer – Inventor, Engineer – Biography
Lewis Howard Latimer – Wikipedia