Lewis Howard Latimer (1848-1928)
Lewis Howard Latimer was born on September 4, 1848 in Chelsea, Massachusetts, where his family fled years earlier to escape slavery (see his father, George Latimer’s court case). At age 16, Lewis chose to enlist into the Union Navy during the Civil War, and was honorably discharged after about a year of service. In search of employment upon arriving home, Latimer finally landed a job at Crosby and Gould patent law firm in 1868, almost three full years after returning home. This law firm defended inventors trying to protect their parents, and it was here that Mr. Latimer taught himself the skill of mechanical drawing, by observing draftsmen who would seek out the firm’s help. Latimer studied and read books on the topic for months with the hopes of becoming a draftsman himself. The opportunity came, and Latimer went from making $3 a week as an office boy, to $20 a week as a draftsman.
Eight years later while at the same firm, Latimer is notified of a request for a draft of a soon-to-be-patented invention. The request was from a teacher by the name of Alexander G. Bell, who was in dire need of a draftsman to submit his patent request before someone else did. Working late into the night, Lewis Latimer finished the draft and Alexander Graham Bell submitted what would be the first telephone patent just a few hours before the next person, Elisha Gray, would submit a similar patent request.
In 1880, 14 years after he helped patent the telephone, Latimer was hired as a mechanical draftsman in the U.S. Electric Lighting Company under Hiram Maxim. Under Maxim is where Latimer would develop his knowledge of incandescent lighting, and eventually draft a patent for the process of manufacturing carbon filaments for the incandescent lightbulb itself. This was not the first carbon filament invented, but a much more efficient and cheap filament indeed. His knowledge on incandescent lighting, as well as his patent expertise, earned him a job in New York with Edison Electric Light Company under, you guessed it, Thomas Edison. Latimer was Edison’s chief drafstman and patent supervisor. His knowledge of carbon filament processing was of great aid to Edison’s lightbulb, and his patent expertise saved Edison’s patent of the lamp from being stolen or misused by others. Edison and Latimer worked so tightly together that Latimer wrote a book on the incandescent light bulb called Incandescent Electric Lighting: A Practical Description of the Edison System.
Lewis Latimer’s impact is insurmountable within engineering and inventorship, but he was no less active in the contemporaneous Civil Rights activities. Though he could not attend, he wrote a speech for the National Colored Mens Convention of 1895 in Detroit, Michigan. It said, “If our cause be made the common cause, and all our claims and demands be founded on justice and humanity, recognizing that we must wrong no man in winning our rights, I have faith to believe that the Nation will respond to our plea for equality before the law, security under the law, and an opportunity, by and through maintenance of the law, to enjoy with our fellow citizens of all races and complexions the blessings guaranteed us under the Constitution.” Putting accurate historical context around Lewis Latimer’s life is the only way to do his lifetime achievements justice. Creating an efficient carbon filament is difficult on its own; fighting to prove your worth to bigoted racists who hated to see you succeed on top of that is a whole ‘nother story.
Outside of his work on incandescent lighting & the telephone, Latimer held a number of patents and a great deal of influence because of them. His mind was tailored to invent, and through being abandoned by his father, surviving the Civil War and fighting the daily fight as a Black Man in America in Antebellum America, he made a name for himself. Most importantly, he furthered the state of our country, being the only minority ‘Edison Pioneer’, the group credited for commercial electricity. After his retirement in 1922, his health began to decline steadily until his death on December 11, 1928. It is safe to say his Legacy will remain with us for decades to come. Thank you, Mr. Latimer.
Read my sources on Lewis H. Latimer here, here, here, here, and here.