Garrett Morgan

Garrett Morgan

Garrett Augustus Morgan (born March 4, 1877 in Claysville , Kentucky, † July 27, 1963 in Cleveland ) was an American inventor. His inventions include a kind of gas mask and a manually operated traffic light .

Life

He was the seventh of eleven children of Eliza Reed and Sydney Morgan, both freed slaves. When he was 14, he moved to Cincinnati , where he worked as an assistant to a wealthy citizen. In 1895 he came to Cleveland, where he became a self-taught sewing machine mechanic . In 1907 he opened an automated tailor shop. In 1909 he had 32 employees. While looking for protection against the scorching of the material, as could happen with fast-working needles, he accidentally discovered a hair straightener. In 1913 he founded the GA Morgan Hair Refining Company to market his development.

On October 13, 1914, he was granted a patent for his gas mask. As early as 1912, he and other business people had founded the National Safety Device Company , which was now producing his patent-based Morgan National Safety Hood . In October 1914, he demonstrated the effectiveness of his mask by spending 20 minutes in a tent covered in smoke from burnt tar, sulfur, formaldehyde and dung. He pretended to be a native American Indian, Big Chief Mason , so that his invention would not suffer from discrimination against blacks.

Morgan at the rescue

On July 14, 1916, workers came across a gas bubble in a tunnel under Lake Erie . There was an explosion and the tunnel was filled with toxic fumes. An eleven-man rescue team was sent down, but did not return, a 16-person team was sent after, but this too fell victim to the gas. Another attempt with improvised respiratory protection had to be stopped, the vapors were too strong. Morgan was asked for help. He dared the descent together with his brother Frank and two other men. You were able to save several men. When word got out of the incident, Morgan lost a number of customers in the southern states who had learned he was black. In the First World War , gas masks based on Morgan's model were used. In addition to Morgan, the Canadian doctor Cluny MacPherson is considered to be the inventor of the gas mask during World War I.

In 1922 Morgan patented an automatic traffic light with signal arms. For the first time, a traffic cop was no longer needed to operate the traffic lights. Shortly before his death at the age of 86, he invented the self-extinguishing cigarette.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Oliver Junker: The face of the century . In: The time . January 19, 1996, p. 42.
2. ^ Edward S. Jenkins: Impact of Social Conditions: A Study of the Works of American Black Scientists and Inventors . In: Journal of Black Studies 14, No. 4, June 1984. pp. 477-491.
3. ^ William M. King: Guardian of the Public Safety: Garret A. Morgan and the Lake Erie Crib Disaster . In: The Jountal of Negro History 70, No. 1-2 1985 pp. 1-13.
4. ↑ Fight against traffic jams for centuries . In: Wiener Zeitung , December 27, 2001, p. 21.
5. ^ Dierk Strothmann: The black Edison . In: Kölnische Rundschau , February 28, 2007.