How Did Garrett Morgan Contribute

Garrett Morgan was a well-known African-American inventor, entrepreneur and pioneer for the black community, America and the whole world who made his mark on the society through his invention of a sewing machine enhancement, primitive gas mask, and traffic lights. In addition, he did have other inventions that did not have as much impact, but most people would say inventing is very hard, so that in its self is a feat. Mr. Morgan’s life did start out a little treacherous, but was nowhere close to the life of his ancestors, parents and some of his siblings. He was one of eleven children and got his work cut down. Respectfully, Garretts early life was full of lack of opportunity and eventually went looking for more opportunity in Ohio, which he

Morgan became aware of smoke over taking firefighters while trying to put out fires and began to work on a fix. The fix involved a hood that had various tubes and an open end that filtered out smoke, and cooled the incoming air through a sponge soaked in water. Although he patented it in 1914, it was not widely used until 1916 when him and his brother were called upon in a Lake Erie explosion. The workers had hit a gas pocket creating a big explosion and three sets of rescuers went to help, but never returned. Garrett Morgan and his crew showed up and were successful in the removal of some of the people after several trips in and out. (Carrillo 82) Accordingly, this brought success, popularity and helped sell his invention to fire departments nationally. He received a patent, grand prize and medal for his invention of the first gas mask. It impacted blacks and whites the same because it helps the society in minimizing the deaths of firefighters and them being overcome with smoke. (IOTE 24) The United States Army also used a similar version of Morgan’s gas mask in World War 1. (McClung 13) Truthfully, his most important invention to society is next in his life after some less impactful

His lighter inventions included products from belt fasteners to car parts to hats. After that, Garrett witnessed a car accident at a busy intersection that had accidents all the time and came up with an improved traffic light. The traffic light was a t-shaped pole that had stop, go and a position for a stop in all direction signal, which improved the prior traffic light that only had stop and go. The traffic lights received a patent in 1923 and is a pioneer to the modern-day traffic system. (Paulson 33) Eventually, he no longer wanted to manage the patent and sold it to general electric for forty thousand dollars, which is roughly five hundred eighty-three thousand four hundred eighty-eight dollars in today’s money. (IOTE 24) Traffic lights not only provided a safer environment for motorist and pedestrians, it also made ground breaking strides in modern day safety across the world and has even been recognized as such. (Paulson 33) Garrett Morgan’s life was coming to an end, he only had a little more impact left to