LEWIS LATIMER

Lewis Howard Latimer was born in 1848 in Massachusetts to parents who had escaped slavery in Virginia; his father's recapture case became a national abolitionist cause. Latimer enlisted in the Union Navy at fifteen, then took a job as an office boy at a patent law firm.

He taught himself mechanical drawing by watching the draftsmen and studying books, and was promoted to head draftsman.

In 1876 he prepared the patent drawings for Alexander Graham Bell's telephone, working nights against a filing deadline. Six years later, at the United States Electric Lighting Company, he patented a process for manufacturing carbon filaments that made bulbs last far longer and cost far less than Edison's fragile paper filaments.

He supervised the installation of electric street lighting in New York, Philadelphia, Montreal — where he learned enough French to instruct the crews — and London.

Latimer joined Edison's company as a patent expert and courtroom witness, wrote Incandescent Electric Lighting in 1890 — the first serious textbook on the subject — and was the only Black member of the Edison Pioneers. He also wrote poetry, painted, and taught English and drafting to immigrants in the evenings.