You Can Thank Black Folks for That: Inventions That Changed the Culture

They say necessity is the mother of invention. And one Black man, looking for ways to make his work easier helped make driving easier for all of us. Richard B. Spikes worked as a mechanic, a saloon keeper and barber. In 1932, he received a patent for an automatic car gear shift device which laid the foundation of what we know today as the automatic transmission. Among his many inventions, Spikes also patented a break testing machine, a swivel barber chair and the technology for the beer tap still used today.

If you’ve never met a potato chip you didn’t like, you have George Speck to thank. Speck invented the snack food by accident in the mid-1850s while working as a chef at a resort in Saratoga Springs, where French fries were a popular menu item. One day, a customer sent his fries back for being cut too thick. Speck sliced the potatoes as thinly as possible before frying them to a crisp and sending them back. But rather than get upset, the guest loved the chips – which eventually caught on with other resort guests as well.

Shirley Ann Jackson, Ph.D., has an impressive list of firsts. She was one of the first two African American women to earn a doctorate in physics in the United States and the first to receive a doctorate from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Her groundbreaking research in telecommunications led to noteworthy inventions, including the touch tone telephone, fiber optic cables, caller ID and call waiting.

Electrical engineer and inventor Otis Boykin invented nearly 30 electronic devices and received 11 patents. But in 1964, he developed one of his most influential, when he created a control unit for the first successful pacemaker – a device implanted into the heart to help regulate the heartbeat.

On May 4, 1897, African American scientist and inventor Joseph A. Smith made gardening a lot easier when he patented the first version of a lawn sprinkler.

The name Jack Daniels likely comes to mind when you think about whiskey. But you may not know that a Black man taught him everything he knew. Born in 1820, Nathan “Nearest” Green was the first known African-American master distiller. His technique used sugar maple charcoal to curb the burn of the alcohol and give it a smooth taste. Many food historians believe the process originated in West Africa, where people used charcoal to purify food and water.

A Black woman gets credit for inventing the first-known home security system in 1966. Queens native Mary Van Brittan Brown was as a nurse who worked odd hours. Looking for a way to protect herself and her home, she designed a system that used a motorized camera to project images onto a monitor. The system also allowed homeowners to unlock the doors with remote to allow access to first respond.

Born in Barbados, Alan Emtage worked as a system administrator when he was assigned a project to find free software on the Internet (which was in its early stages at the time). To make his job easier, he wrote a program that did the work for him. And in 1989, he created Archie, the first Internet search engine.

Elevator rides are a lot safer now, thanks to Alexander Miles. Miles was a successful barber who owned a shop in a four-story hotel in Duluth, Minnesota. Riding in elevators with manually-operated shaft doors, he saw the risks open doors presented riders – a dangerous mistake that resulted in some falling to their death. Miles invented a way for elevators to open and close automatically using levers and rollers. And in 1887, he received a patent for his idea.

If you’ve ever had an epic water gun battle in your backyard, you probably used Lonnie Johnson’s wildly popular invention. The former Air Force and NASA engineer, who holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, an M.S. in Nuclear Engineering and an honorary Ph.D. in Science from Tuskegee University, is credited with inventing the Super Soaker® water gun toy. In 1989, Johnson licensed the Super Soaker® to a company eventually bought by toy giant Hasbro Corporation. Since it’s debut on the market, Super Soaker® sales have totaled nearly one billion dollars.

Sarah Goode was one of the first African American women to receive a patent by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the person credited with the invention of the Murphy bed. The former slave moved to Chicago with her husband to Chicago after the Civil War, where she and her husband owned a furniture store. Goode designed a folding bed that doubled as a desk, and in 1885, she obtained a patent for the design we call the Murphy bed.

Born in 1904, Dr. Charles Richard Drew is known as the “father of the blood bank.” The surgeon and medical researcher discovered that by separating plasma from blood, the plasma could be preserved and used in transfusions. His groundbreaking work saved lives during World War II.

Drying your laundry on a line or over an open flame (seriously) was the norm before George T. Sampson’s automatic clothes dryer. In 1892, he developed and patented America’s first automatic clothes dryer, which used suspension rods positioned over a stove. Users could dry their clothing more efficiently – without worrying about setting them on fire. Sampson’s design was used until it was replaced by gas and electric dryers in the 1940s.

Thanks to Frederick McKinley Jones, we can enjoy fresh fruits and vegetables all year. The Cincinnati native worked as an apprentice auto mechanic as a teenager – a job that let him cultivate his curiosity of how things work. Although Jones received over 60 patents in various fields, his most famous one came in 1940 for his invention of a refrigerator system that allowed trucks to carry food for long distances without spoiling.

Garrett Morgan had only an elementary school education. But he invented a device that saves countless lives every day. After seeing an accident in a nearby intersection, Morgan began working on a solution to make driving safer. His three-light traffic signal included a warning signal to let drivers know they’d have to stop. After getting a patent for his idea, Moran sold it to General Electric for $40,000.

Born on a Louisiana plantation to sharecropper parents, Sarah Breedlove became one of the most successful female entrepreneurs and the celebrated self-made millionaire we know today as Madam C.J. Walker.

When an issue with her scalp caused her to lose her hair, Walker used what she knew from her work as a washerwoman and a pharmacist’s cook to develop her own product to promote scalp health and hair growth – Madam Walker’s Wonderful Hair Grower. Walker was the inventor and the salesforce, traveling for over a year selling her products door to door throughout the South.