Henry E. Baker

“ And it is highly important, therefore, that we should make note of what the race has achieved along this line to the end that proper credit may be accorded it as having made some contribution to our national progress.
Standing foremost in the list of things that have actually done most to promote our national progress in all material ways is the item of inventions. Without inventions we should have had no agricultural implements with which to till the fertile fields of our vast continent; no mining machinery for recovering the rich treasure that for centuries lay hidden beneath our surface ”

“ Matzeliger was as truly a pioneer, blazing the way for a great industrial triumph, as was Whitney, or Howe, or Watt, or Fulton, or any other one of the scores of pioneers in the field of mechanical genius. The cotton gin of to-day is, of course, not the cotton gin first given to the world by Whitney, but the essential principles of its construction are found clearly outlined in Whitney's machine. The complex and intricate sewing machine of to-day, with its various attachments to meet the needs of the modern seamstress, is not the crude machine that came from the brain of Elias Howe ”

“ Only a few years later a leading newspaper in the city of Richmond, Va., made the bold statement that of the many thousands of patents annually granted by our government to the inventors of our country, "not a single patent had ever been granted to a colored man." ”

“ In a recent correspondence that has reached nearly two-thirds of the more than 12,000 registered patent attorneys in this country, who are licensed to prosecute applications for patents before the Patent Office at Washington, it is astonishing to have nearly 2,500 of them reply that they never heard of a colored inventor, and not a few of them add that they never expect to hear of one. ”

“ The foregoing facts are here presented as a part only of the record made by the race in the field of invention for the first half century of our national life. We can never know the whole story. But we know enough to feel sure that if others knew the story even as we ourselves know it, it would present us in a somewhat different light to the judgment of our fellow men, and, perhaps, make for us a position of new importance in the industrial activities of our country. ”

“ In the credit here accorded our race for its achievements in the field of invention our women as well as our men are entitled to share. With an industrial field necessarily more circumscribed than that occupied by our men, and therefore with fewer opportunities and fewer reasons, as well, for [Pg 12] exercising the inventive faculty, they have, nevertheless, made a remarkably creditable showing. The record shows that more than twenty colored women have been granted patents for their inventions, and that these inventions cover also a wide range of subjects—artistic, utilitarian, fanciful. ”

“ In fact, it seems absolutely impossible to get even an approximately correct answer to that question for our race. Whatever of statistics one is able to get on this subject must be obtained almost wholly in a haphazard sort of way from persons not employed in the Patent Office, and who must, in the great majority of cases, rely on their memory to some extent for the facts they give. Under such circumstances as these it is easy to see the large amount of labor involved in getting up such statistics as may be relied upon as being true. ”

“ Into this vast yet specific field of scientific industry the colored man has, contrary to the belief of many, made his entry, and has brought to his work in it that same degree of patient inquisitiveness, plodding industry and painstaking experiment that has so richly rewarded others in the same line of endeavor, namely, the endeavor both to create new things and to effect such new combinations of old things as will adapt them to new uses. ”

“ There is just one other source of information which, though its yield of facts is small, yet makes up in reliability what it lacks in numerousness; and that is where the inventor himself comes to the Patent Office to look after his invention. ”

“ That the colored people in the United States have made substantial progress in the general spread of intelligence among them, and in elevating the tone of their moral life; in the acquisition of property; in the development and support of business enterprises, and in the professional activities, is a matter of quite common assent by those who have been at all observant on the subject. ”

“ As a very young man Matzeliger worked in a shoe shop in Lynn, Mass., serving his apprenticeship at that trade. Seeking, in the true spirit of the inventor, to make two blades of grass grow where only one grew before, he devised the first complete machine ever invented for performing automatically all the operations involved in attaching soles to shoes. ”

“ We know that the colored man has accomplished something—indeed, a very great deal—in the field of invention, but it would be of the first importance to us now to know exactly what he has done, and the commercial value of his productions. ”

“ News, of October 3, 1889, it appears that the United Shoe Machinery Company, above mentioned, established at Lynn a school, the only one of its kind in the world, where boys are taught exclusively to operate the Matzeliger type of machine; that a class of about 200 boys and young men are graduated from this school annually and sent out to various parts of the world to instruct others in the art of handling this machine. ”

“ Woods' patents have been assigned to the foremost electrical corporations of the world, such as the General Electric Company, of New York, and the American Bell Telephone Company, of Boston. These records also show that he followed other lines of thought in the exercise of his inventive faculty, one of his other inventions being an incubator, another a complicated and ingenious amusement device, another a steam-boiler furnace, and also a mechanical brake.
Mr. Woods is, perhaps, the best known of all the inventors whose achievements redound to the credit of our race ”

“ A very recent experiment in the matter of collecting information on this subject has disclosed some remarkably striking facts, not the least interesting of which is the very widespread belief among those who ought to know better that the colored man has done absolutely nothing of value in the line of invention. ”

“ Mr. W. A. Lavalette, of the Government Printing Office, the largest printing establishment in the world, began his career as a printer there years before the development of that art called into use the wonderful machines employed in it to-day; and one of his first efforts was to devise a printing machine superior to the pioneer type used at that time. This was in 1879, and he succeeded that year in inventing and patenting a printing machine that was a notable novelty in its day, though it has, of course, long ago been superseded by others. ”

“ Now there ought not to be anything strange or unbelievable in the fact that in any given group of more than 10,000,000 human beings, of whatever race, living in our [Pg 4] age, in our country, and developing under our laws, one can find multiplied examples of every mental bent, of every stage of mental development, and of every evidence of mental perception that could be found in any other similar group of human beings of any other race ”

“ Some idea may be had of the magnitude of this giant industry, which is thus shown to have grown directly out of the inventions of a young colored man, by recalling the fact that the corporation represents the consolidation of forty-one different smaller companies, that its factories cover twenty-one acres of ground, that it gives employment daily to 4,200 persons, that its working capital is quoted at $20,860,000, and that it controls more than 300 patents representing improvements in the machines it produces. ”

“ From the numerous statements made by various attorneys to the effect that they have had several colored clients whose names they could not recall, and whose inventions they could not identify on their books, it is practically certain that the nearly 800 verified patents do not represent more than one-half of those that have been actually granted to colored inventors, and that the credit for these must perhaps forever lie hidden in the unbreakable silence of official records. ”

“ The effort is made through a circular letter addressed to the thousands of patent attorneys throughout the country, who come in contact often with inventors as their clients, to popular and influential newspapers, to conspicuous citizens of both races, and to the owners of large manufacturing industries where skilled mechanics of both races are employed, all of whom are asked to report what they happen to know on the subject under inquiry. ”

“ McCoy's lubricating cups were famous thirty years ago as a necessary equipment in all up-to-date machinery, and it would be rather interesting to know how many of the thousands of machinists who used them daily had any idea then that they were the invention of a colored man. ”

“ Sometimes it has been difficult to get this information by correspondence even from colored inventors themselves. Many of them refuse to acknowledge that their inventions are in any way identified with the colored race, on the ground, presumably, that the publication of that fact might adversely affect the commercial value of their invention ”

“ Coming down to a later day, when our race as a whole had shared, to some extent at least, in the progress of learning, so well informed an exponent of popular thought as Henry Ward Beecher is said to have declared that the whole African race in its native land could be obliterated from the face of the earth without loss to civilization, and yet Beecher knew, or should have known, of the scholarly Dr. ”

“ One practising attorney, writing from a small town in Tennessee, said that he not only has never heard of a colored man inventing anything, but that he and the other lawyers to whom he passed the inquiry in that locality were "inclined to regard the whole subject as a joke." ”

“ Without inventions we could have none of those numerous instruments which to-day in the hands of the scientist enable him accurately to forecast the weather, to anticipate and provide against storms on land and at sea, to detect seismic disturbances and warn against the dangers incident to their repetition ”

“ They formed the great majority of her mechanics and skilled artisans as well as of her ordinary laborers, and from this class of workmen came a great variety of the ordinary mechanical appliances, the invention of which grew directly out of the problems presented by their daily employment. ”

“ He began more than fifteen years ago to invent devices for automatically playing the piano, and is at present in the employ of a large piano factory, where his various inventions in piano-player mechanism are eagerly adopted in the construction of some of the finest player pianos on the market. ”

“ But before directing attention specifically to some of the very interesting details disclosed by this latest investigation into the subject, let us consider for a brief moment a few of the inventions which colored men have made, but for which no patents appear to be of record. ”

“ Pelham seemed anxious to get through with his job quickly, for he devised a machine used as an adjunct in tabulating the statistics from the manufacturers' schedules in a way that displaced a dozen men in a given quantity of work, doing the work economically, speedily and with faultless precision, when operated under Mr. ”