Don’t Take Your Safety For Granted

 Plan for Safety – Plan to Survive

 Miles L Felmly

U.A.W. LOCAL 1714 Safety Representative

In honor of Black History Month I want to give some information on one of my favorite inventors, who just happens to also be black.

Garrett Morgan was a Cleveland, Ohio resident and was the inventor several safety devices, most notably the safety hood and smoke protector. This invention was the beginning of mine safety devices and was also the forerunner of the self contained breathing apparatus that is used by every fire department in the modern world.

Garrett Morgan patented a safety hood and smoke protector after seeing firefighters struggling from the smoke they encountered in the line of duty and hearing about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. His device used a wet sponge to filter out smoke and cool the air.

Because Garrett was a black man, many people would not even talk to him about his invention.  He was able to sell his invention around the country, only by sometimes using the tactic of having a hired white actor take credit rather
than revealing himself as its inventor. For demonstrations of the device, he sometimes adopted the disguise of "Big Chief Mason", a purported full-blooded Indian from the Walpole Island Indian Reservation in Canada. At that time in history, people were more likely to be willing to deal with a Canadian Indian, than a black American.

His invention became known nationally when he and three other men used it to save several men after a 1916 tunnel explosion under Lake Erie. Cleveland's newspapers and city officials initially ignored Morgan's personal acts of heroism as the first to rush into the tunnel for the rescue, and it took years for the city to recognize his contributions. Eventually, Morgan was awarded a gold Medal of Bravery by prominent citizens of Cleveland and a gold medal for bravery from the International Association of Fire Chiefs.

Morgan's invention of the safety hood was featured on the television show "Inventions that Shook the World".

In the following picture Garrett A. Morgan right after rescuing a man at the 1917 Lake Erie Crib Disaster

           (picture Public Domain in the US because published prior to 1923)

At the age of fifteen, Morgan moved 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, Morgan 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, Morgan moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where he worked
repairing sewing machines for a clothing manufacturer. In 1920 he helped to
found the Cleveland Call and Post newspaper.

In 1907, Morgan opened his own sewing machine and shoe
repair shop. It was the first of several businesses he would own. In 1908,
Morgan helped found the Cleveland Association of Colored Men. In 1909, he
expanded his business to include a tailoring shop. The company made coats,
suits, dresses, and other clothing. Morgan experimented with a liquid that gave
sewing machine needles a high polish and prevented the needle from scorching
fabric as it sewed. Accidentally, Morgan discovered that this liquid not only
straightened fabric but also hair. He made the liquid into a cream and began
the G.A. Morgan Hair Refining Company. Morgan also made a black hair oil dye
and a curved-tooth iron comb in 1910, to straighten hair.

The first American-made automobiles were introduced to
consumers just before the turn of the 20th Century, and pedestrians, bicycles,
animal-drawn wagons and motor vehicles all had to share the same roads. Between
1913 and 1921, a number of versions of traffic signaling devices, both
mechanical and automated, were patented by various inventors. Of these, only a
few saw production or implementation on public roads. Morgan's device, first
patented in 1923, was a hand-cranked, manually-operated mechanical semaphore
signal. His device had two key safety features: having an intermediate
"all stop" signal state to give moving traffic time to stop before
signaling cross traffic to proceed, and having a "half mast"
position to indicate general caution at times when the device operator was not
present.

 

At the Emancipation Centennial Celebration in Chicago,
Illinois in August 1963, Morgan was nationally recognized. Although in
ill-health, and nearly blind, he continued to work on his inventions; one of
his last was a self-extinguishing cigarette, which employed a small plastic
pellet filled with water, placed just before the filter.

In Prince George's County, Maryland, the Prince George's
County Board renamed Summerfield Boulevard to Garrett A. Morgan Boulevard in
his honor. The adjacent Washington Metro's Morgan Boulevard Station was going
to be named Summerfield, but was consequently renamed as well. Also named in
his honor is the Garrett A. Morgan Cleveland School of Science in Cleveland,
Ohio. In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante included Morgan on his list of 100
Greatest African Americans.

Grave of Garrett A. Morgan

Morgan died on August 27, 1963, at the age of 86, and is
buried at Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland, Ohio.

Note: Much of the text of this article was done with
research of Wikipedia and using the Text of Creative Commons Attribution.

 

Don’t Take Your Safety For Granted

Plan for Safety – Plan to Survive

Miles L Felmly

U.A.W. LOCAL 1714 Safety Representative