March 4 – Happy Birthday, Garrett Morgan

 Posted on March 4, 2021

This is an update of my post published March 4, 2010:

Born on this date in 1877, Morgan was an African-American inventor and hero. After hearing about a horrifying industrial fire, Morgan developed a respiratory protective hood (kind of like a snorkel for firefighters and rescue workers). He also invented one version of a traffic signal, a hair-straightening preparation, and much more.

Morgan’s parents were former slaves, and his family lived in Kentucky. When he had to leave school in order to work, Morgan moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, to find opportunities. He also paid for tutors so he could continue his education on his own.

In 1895 he moved to Cleveland. He was so good at repairing machines that he was soon able to open his own sewing machine repair shop and shoe repair shop. He added a tailoring shop and eventually a newspaper business. All along, he invented things to make his work better or easier. 

Morgan’s safety hood was one of his most successful inventions, which he was able to sell all over the country.

Besides for being intelligent, creative and hard working, there were two unusual reasons for Morgan’s success:

1) In order to sell his protective hood, he often had a white partner take credit as the inventor. When Morgan himself had to make the pitch, he pretended to be “Big Chief Mason” from the Walpole Island Indian Reservation in Canada. It’s definitely sad when you have to pretend to be someone you’re not!

2) Morgan was able to use his invention to help save some men from a 1916 tunnel explosion in the Cleveland waterworks, more than 200 feet under Lake Erie. He and a team of volunteers put on the protective hoods and then began to carry the injured workers up and out of danger, as well as to recover the dead bodies. This heroic rescue (pictured below) got nationwide coverage, and orders for the safety hood poured in from fire departments around the country.

 

(Unfortunately, some officials cancelled their orders when they realized that Morgan was black! I guess they preferred to have their emergency workers die rather than to pay a black person for his life-saving invention! Yikes-on-bikes!)

How do you know what’s true?

The Black Inventors website has nice biography about Morgan. BUT please carefully read the section about Morgan’s invention of the traffic signal.

According to the website, Morgan’s traffic signal was “automatic” and didn’t need “a policeman or worker present.” Morgan eventually sold the rights to this invention, we are told, for the “astounding sum of $40,000.000.” Also, “[t]oday’s modern traffic lights are based upon Morgan’s original design.”

Years ago, when I first read those words, I believed what I’d read; however, almost immediately I read on a now-defunct website called Inventing History that the often-repeated “fact” that “Garrett Morgan invented the traffic signal” is over-simplified to the point of being just plain wrong.

I wasn’t sure what to believe. I checked several other websites. Many of them repeat the Black Inventors’ information about Morgan’s traffic signal, including that he sold his idea to General Electric for the staggering (then) sum of $40,000. On the other hand, at the time, Wikipedia said that “Another piece of popular lore is that Morgan sold his invention to the General Electric Company for $40,000 – a huge sum by the standards of the day. Because no records of this very large transaction have been discovered, it is likely untrue.”

So, which information is correct? And how can we tell?

I read some more, and I noted that during the early 1900s, when Morgan invented his traffic signal, there were a LOT of different traffic signals being invented and re-invented. The world’s first traffic signal was installed before there were automobiles: the gas-lit signal was installed in London in late 1868. It exploded less than a month after it was first used!

Apparently most early traffic signals borrowed ideas from train signals, using semaphore “arms” or other signs with the words “STOP” and “GO”…

…or using the familiar red-means-stop and green-means-go. The introduction of the yellow (or amber) light meaning “caution – the light is about to turn!” was the invention of William Potts and was installed in Detroit in 1920.

Morgan’s traffic signal, patented in 1923, was T-shaped; it doesn’t have round colored lights, but rather illuminated words “STOP” and “GO” and “ALL STOP.” It was manually operated. 

The ALL STOP position was a pretty great brainstorm: this halted all vehicles so pedestrians could cross. But it also gave drivers more time to respond to the changing lights. Morgan had seen with his own eyes the disaster that could happen when automobiles were about to enter an intersection when the signal suddenly changed from GO to STOP.

I am soooooo not taking away anything from Morgan’s invention – and as far as I know there is no evidence of how much he sold it for – but I don’t understand how writers can justify saying that modern traffic lights are based on Morgan’s design, or that his signal was automatic, with no need for a police officer or other worker. I spotted a few websites that specifically gave Morgan the credit for the first amber light – and that seems doubly false, since he didn’t have an amber light at all, let alone the first one!

One problem with the Internet is that, once one site states something in error, other people building other websites tend to quote it as if it were fact. (I’m sure I’ve done it, too. I try hard to recheck things, but…)

I guess the lesson for us all is, don’t believe everything you read!

Fire Safety

Obviously, we should all have working smoke and carbon monoxide detectors (in the garage, too!), keep our dryer vents clean and our electronic devices dusted, handle electricity and cooking appliances carefully, and have a plan of evacuation ready. There are some fire safety tips here.

Morgan’s safety hood dealt with protecting rescuers’ breathing during a fire or other disaster. If you don’t have a self-contained breathing apparatus when exposed to a fire, remember that crawling or staying low can be safer than being upright because smoke and poisonous gases rise with the heat. Also, you can put a damp cloth over your nose and mouth to make it easier to breathe.

Make It Better

Most inventors don’t come up with completely new ideas, but instead take others’ ideas and make them better (cheaper, longer lasting, more beautiful, bigger, smaller, and so forth).

How can you make today’s modern traffic lights better?

How can you make it easier for blind pedestrians to use traffic lights? 

Can traffic lights help ease traffic congestion?

Can traffic lights help catch people who break rules or laws?

Is there some way to prevent people from running red lights?

Look around you. What else do you see that needs improving?

If you could your cell phone, what features would it have?
How about a car? A stapler? Mechanical pencils? A bike?