Lewis Howard Latimer

Lewis Howard Latimer

was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, on September 4, 1848, the youngest of four children of Rebecca Latimer (1823 – August 13, 1910) and George Latimer who was an escaped slave who later had to pay his slave owner $400 for his freedom.

In 1881, Latimer, along with Joseph Nichols, invented a light bulb with a carbon filament, an improvement on Thomas Edison's original paper filament, which would burn out quickly, and sold the patent to the United States Electric Company in 1881. He received a second patent on January 17th 1882 for the "Process of Manufacturing Carbons", an improved method for the production of lightbulb carbon filaments

Latimer is an inductee of the National Inventors Hall of Fame for his work on electric filament manufacturing techniques

An invention program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is named after him

His patents

· U.S. Patent 147,363 "Water closets for railway cars," February 10, 1874.

· U.S. Patent 247,097 "Electric lamp" (with Nichols, Joseph V.), September 13, 1881

· U.S. Patent 252,386 "Process of Manufacturing Carbons," January 17, 1882,

· U.S. Patent 255,212 "Supporter for electric lamps" (with Tregoning, John), March 21, 1882

· U.S. Patent 334,078 "Early Air Conditioning Unit Apparatus for cooling and disinfecting," January 12, 1886

· U.S. Patent 557,076 "Locking rack for hats, coats, and umbrellas," March 24, 1896

· U.S. Patent 968,787 "Lamp fixture" (with Brown, Charles W.), August 30, 1910

Retrieved from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Howard_Latimer