BLACK HISTORY INVENTORS SPOTLIGHT: Garrett Morgan

Garrett Augustus Morgan, Sr. (March 4, 1877 – July 27, 1963) was an African American inventor and community leader. His most notable inventions included a type of protective respiratory hood (or gas mask), a traffic signal, and a hair-straightening preparation. He is renowned for a heroic rescue in 1916 in which he and three others used his safety hood device to save workers trapped in a water intake tunnel being dug under Lake Erie after a natural gas explosion and fire which took the lives of workers and the first police officers and firefighters who attempted to rescue them. He is also credited as the first African American in Cleveland, Ohio, to own an automobile.
Morgan was born in Paris, Kentucky to Sydney, a former slave and son of Confederate Colonel John H. Morgan, and Eliza Reed, also a former slave who was half American Indian. Morgan moved at the age of fourteen to Cincinnati, Ohio in search of employment. Most of his teenage years were spent working as a handyman for a wealthy Cincinnati landowner. Like many African Americans of his day, he had to quit school at a young age in order to work. However, the teen-aged Morgan was able to hire his own tutor and continued his studies while living in Cincinnati. In 1895, he moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where he worked repairing sewing machines for a clothing manufacturer. His first invention, developed during this period, was a belt fastener for sewing machines. He married his first wife, Madge Nelson, in 1896, but that marriage ended in divorce. Word of his skill at fixing things and experimenting spread quickly throughout Cleveland, opening up various opportunities for him.
Please Read More on this Great Innovator @: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garrett_Morgan

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Black Inventor Garrett Morgan / M85 Gas Mask Package #GASMASK-M85 S3 / Aviation Light Gun Signals / One of the first cars manufactured by the Dodge Brothers in Detroit...