Today in history – July 12, 1872 -  Elijah McCoy created an invention that has made him arguably the most notable African American inventor ever. His birth date is still unknown although the date is speculated by many sources ranging from March 27, 1843 to May 2, 1844. His story would not have been possible if not for his parents. They were former slaves who fled from Kentucky to Canada by way of the Underground Railroad. Elijah one of 12 children would then be born in Colchester, Canada (interesting fact most the slaves that escaped via the Underground Railroad escaped to Canada). His father, George McCoy, enrolled in the British forces to help stop the Canadian leader Louis Riel’s launched rebellion in 1837. In appreciation of his military services, George McCoy was given 160 acres of land by the British. As a result of his father’s ties to Britain, at the age of 16 Elijah McCoy he was offered and accepted an apprenticeship in Mechanical Engineering in Edinburgh, Scotland. At the time he was awarded the apprenticeship, slavery in America had not yet been abolished. Thus, this opportunity wouldn’t have been possible if his family hadn’t escaped slavery in America. One can’t help but wonder how many other McCoy’s were unable to mature intellectually because of slavery?

In the story of Elijah McCoy it is important to remember the opportunities given to him were basically unheard of as far as African American’s had been concerned; he took full advantage of them. He earned credentials in Scotland being recognized as a master mechanic and engineer. Despite the accolades he received in Scotland, when he returned to the U.S post Civil War (slavery abolished) he was not able to receive a job in his field. Instead he became a locomotive fireman and oiler for the Michigan Central Railroad”. Although this was not in his field, this was seen as a responsible job and one of the highest an African American could receive at the time. The position required that he be responsible for “fueling the steam engine and [as] the oiler [he] lubricated the engine’s moving parts as well as the train’s axles and bearings.” . What his employers did not plan on was the fact that his credentials would help him see and solve problems that neither his co-workers nor superiors could. At that time trains needed to be periodically stopped in order to be lubricated. McCoy developed a lubricator for steam engines that allowed the train to be lubricated without stopping. This lubricator was duplicated by many but never matched the proficiency of McCoy’s invention. This is why he is referred to as the originator for his invention deemed the “The Real McCoy” a phrase that is still used today. He patented the invention on July 12, 1872 the “Locomotive Lubricator”. When we think about the importance of his invention we have to remember that there was no successful plane flight until 20 years later. So, the train was the only means for extensive travel within the Unites States and his lubricating system increased the distance trains could run without requiring stops.

McCoy didn’t stop at the “Locomotive Lubricator”; he obtained 58 patents in his life time, the most of any African American at that time. His hard work made substantial advancements in mechanical engineering and that is why he is being acknowledged today in history.

Interested readers are encouraged to visit the Engineering Pathway’s resources on African American scientists, engineers & inventors and our engineering diversity or our computing diversity websites.

Readers interested in inventions by African Americans may want to view the following blogs: Ice cream scoop invented (February 2), Birth of first self-made millionairess (December 23), John Hopkins hospital performs first open heart surgery (November 29), and Howard University founded in 1866 (November 20).

Today in History-March 3, 1831–Thomas Jennings became the first African-American to receive a patent for his invention of ‘dry-scouring’, a process better known today as dry-cleaning.

As a free man, he established a local business in New York in which he sold clothing. However, customers became disgruntled that there was no means to effectively clean the materials used in the clothing Jennings sold. He took it upon himself to find a solution to this problem. He began testing cleaning liquids in hopes of finding a better way to clean the clothing, the one that worked best was the ‘dry-scouring’ idea which he sought and received patent for in 1831. “Under the United States patent laws of 1793 (and later, as revised in 1836), a person must sign an oath or declaration stating that they were a citizen of the United States” in order to receive a patent. Before the laws revision in 1836, slaves were allowed to make patents also. Since Jennings was free, he was able to patent his idea. It is documented that the money he received from the patent was used to free his family and endorse the abolishment of slavery. However, when the law which allowed him to make his patent was revised in 1836 (5 years after receiving his patent), slaves could not make patents because they were not considered citizens. This law was revised, after slave-owner Oscar Stuart took credit for his slave (Ned’s) invention of the ‘double cotton scraper’. He claimed, “the master is the owner of the fruits of the labor of the slave both manual and intellectual”. This case is essential in understanding the importance of Jennings status as a free man. His freedom validated his citizenship at the time of his patent making him the first African American to receive a patent. Jennings went on to serve as “the assistant secretary for the First Annual Convention of the People of Color in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania”. His accomplishments are extraordinary, making him a monumental figure ‘Today in History’.

For more information, browse the Engineering Pathway‘s resources on African American scientists, engineers & inventors and our engineering diversity website.

Readers interested in inventions by African Americans may want to view the following blogs: Ice cream scoop invented (February 2),  First patent by African American Inventor Latimer (February 10), First African American woman to receive an American medical degree (March 1),  First African American to recieve a patent (March 3),  First African-American in Space, (August 30), Howard University founded in 1866 (November 20), John Hopkins hospital performs first open heart surgery (November 29), and Birth of first self-made millionairess (December 23).

Dr. Crumpler was born in Delaware to Absolum Davis and Matilda Webber in 1831. Interestingly enough, the date she received her degree was one year after the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863 – in other words, she received her degree only a year after slavery became illegal (slavery wasn’t even considered fully abolished until 13th amendment which occurred December 12, 1865). Obviously, the discrimination faced at these times for African Americans was unimaginable. Dr.Crumpler didn’t stop with the medical degree; she began her practice in Boston shortly thereafter before moving to Richmond, Virginia at the end of the Civil war in 1865. Richmond, Virginia was part of what was known as the Southern Black Belt. She arrived in Richmond during the Reconstruction era. During this period, blacks experienced very intense discrimination as they struggled to fully break free from the chains of slavery. Dr.Crumpler moved to Richmond because she felt it would be “a proper field for real missionary work, and one that would present ample opportunities to become acquainted with the diseases of women and children. During my stay there nearly every hour was improved in that sphere of labor. The last quarter of the year 1866, I was enabled . . . to have access each day to a very large number of the indigent, and others of different classes, in a population of over 30,000 colored.” In 1883, she published her book “Book of Medical Discourse” in which she gave a summary of her career path. There are no known images of Dr.Crumpler, but the magnitude of her accomplishments are extraordinary making her a prominent figure today in history.

For more information, browse the Engineering Pathway’s resources on African American scientists, engineers & inventors, gender equity, and our engineering diversity website.

February is African American History Month. Celebrate by browsing the Engineering Pathway‘s resources on African American scientists, engineers & inventors and our computing and engineering diversity websites.

Readers interested in inventions by African Americans may want to view the following blogs: Martin Luther King Day (January 20),  Ice cream scoop invented (February 2),  First patent by African American Inventor Latimer (February 10), First African American woman to receive an American medical degree (March 1),  First African American to recieve a patent (March 3),  The Real McCoy (July 12),  First African-American in Space, (August 30), Howard University founded in 1866 (November 20), John Hopkins hospital performs first open heart surgery (November 29), Rosa Parks Day (December 1), and Birth of first self-made millionairess (December 23).

Today in History – February 10, 1874 – Water-closed railway cars patented by Lewis Latimer, U.S. patent (No. 147,363). Latimer is better known for his patents for improvement in incandescent electric lamps while working for Edison. In 1890 he published Incandescent Electric Lighting, a technical engineering book which became a guide for lighting engineers.

February is Black History month. This would be a great time to browse the Engineering Pathway’s resources on African American scientists, engineers & inventors and our engineering diversity website.

Readers interested in inventions by African Americans may want to view the following blogs: Martin Luther King Day (January 20),  Ice cream scoop invented (February 2),  First patent by African American Inventor Latimer (February 10), First African American woman to receive an American medical degree (March 1),  First African American to recieve a patent (March 3),  The Real McCoy (July 12),  First African-American in Space, (August 30), Howard University founded in 1866 (November 20), John Hopkins hospital performs first open heart surgery (November 29), Rosa Parks Day (December 1), and Birth of first self-made millionairess (December 23).

February is African American History Month. Celebrate by browsing the Engineering Pathway‘s resources on African American scientists, engineers & inventors and our computing and engineering diversity websites.

Readers interested in inventions by African Americans may want to view the following blogs: Martin Luther King Day (January 20),  Ice cream scoop invented (February 2),  First patent by African American Inventor Latimer (February 10), First African American woman to receive an American medical degree (March 1),  First African American to recieve a patent (March 3),  The Real McCoy (July 12),  First African-American in Space, (August 30), Howard University founded in 1866 (November 20), John Hopkins hospital performs first open heart surgery (November 29), Rosa Parks Day (December 1), and Birth of first self-made millionairess (December 23).

Today in History – February 6, 1959 - Kilby patents the integrated circuit.

Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce at the small Fairchild Semiconductor start-up company were both working on the concept of an integrated circuit in 1958. Prior to this invention, only parts of a circuit – such as the transistor – were fabricated using semiconductor technology.   Even though some of the other parts were composed of substrates using germanium or silicon, they were soldered together on other substrates to form the circuit.  The integrated circuit concept was to make all of the parts, such as the capacitors and resistors, and their connections out of silicon on a single chip. By September 12, Kilby had built a working model.

On February 6, 1959 Kilby applied for a patent and Texas Instruments was issued U.S. patent # 3,138,743 in 1964 for “Miniaturized electronic circuits”.

Noyce was aware of the work at Texas Instruments and was careful to improve on their design and submitted a more detailed patent application on July 30, 1959. On April 25, 1961, the patent office awarded Robert Noyce the first patent for an integrated circuit, while Kilby’s application was still being analyzed. Both Fairchild and Texas Instruments introduced commercial ICs  in 1961

Today, both men are acknowledged as having independently conceived of the idea and are given credit as the inventors of the integrated circuit. Kilby was co-awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2000. Most believe that Robert Noyce would have shared this prize had he been alive. (Nobel Prizes cannot be awarded posthumously.)

Jack Kilby is also well known as the inventor of the portable calculator in 1967 and was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1970. Robert Noyce co-founded Intel in 1968.

For more information, see the Engineering Pathway’s educational resources on integrated circuits or view our Electrical Engineering Education community site.

February is African American History Month. Celebrate by browsing the Engineering Pathway‘s resources on African American scientists, engineers & inventors and our computing and engineering diversity websites.

Readers interested in inventions by African Americans may want to view the following blogs: Martin Luther King Day (January 20),  Ice cream scoop invented (February 2),  First patent by African American Inventor Latimer (February 10), First African American woman to receive an American medical degree (March 1),  First African American to recieve a patent (March 3),  The Real McCoy (July 12),  First African-American in Space, (August 30), Howard University founded in 1866 (November 20), John Hopkins hospital performs first open heart surgery (November 29), Rosa Parks Day (December 1), and Birth of first self-made millionairess (December 23).

Today in History – January 20, 1986 – First federal holiday honoring Martin Luther King. Through fifteen years of the persistent efforts of Congress Members John Conyers (Michigan), Shirley Chisholm (New York) and an army of other supports, Martin Luther King Day legislation was passed in 1983. A number of changes were required for it to be acceptable as a federal holiday. The date was changed to the third Monday in January, rather than his birthday of January 15, so as to distance it from Christmas and New Years. Several states resisted celebrating the holiday for various reasons. Several southern states included celebrations for various Confederate generals on that day. Arizona voters didn’t approve the holiday until 1992 after pressure from a tourist boycott. Only recently in 2000 was it first officially observed in all 50 states.

Ironically this year, the original Martin Luther King Day of January 20 falls on the inauguration of the first acknowledged African American President. Barack Obama’s “This is your victory” election day speech spoke of a nation of hope “where all things are possible”. “Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a bit better than the one we inhabit today”.

Advocates of Martin Luther King Day promote it as a day to focus on service activities using the motto “make it a Day ON, Not a Day Off!”. In fact, the 1994 King Holiday and Service Act designates the holiday as a national day of volunteer service, asking “Americans of all backgrounds and ages to celebrate Dr. King’s legacy by turning community concerns into citizen action.”

Martin Luther King brought together a diverse cross-section of the American citizenry to break down barriers and join forces in a common cause of justice and equity. Unfortunately, we still have much further to go in achieving diversity and inclusion in engineering. Community service learning projects have been proven to be an effective tool in developing integrative thinking and societal context in engineering education, as well as a means of attracting and motivating underrepresented engineers. One of the most successful efforts is the EPICS (Engineering Projects for Community Service) program originated in the College of Engineering at Purdue and the 2005 winner of the National Academy of Engineering‘s prestigious Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education.

For more information, see the Engineering Pathway’s resources on Martin Luther King and community service learning. Or view our Engineering Diversity or our Computing Diversity educational community sites. View Michael Smith’s December 10th Engineering Education blog on the anniversary of his Nobel Peace Prize. The title of his Nobel lecture was “The Quest for Peace and Justice”.

Today in History – December 23, 1867 – Birth of first self-made millionairess (Sarah Breedlove for hair straightner invention, products and services). Born in poverty in 1867 (left graphic is of her birth house) on the shores of the Mississippi River in northeast Louisiana, her parents died of ‘yellow fever‘ while she was a young child of seven. Her parents, Owen and Minera Breedlove, were former slaves to “Robert W. Burney’s Madison Parish farm which was a battle-staging area during the Civil War for General Ulysses S. Grant and his Union troops”. Walker was an entrepreneur and made her fortune through her self-made hair products. She developed a product to straighten African American women’s hair. She claimed that the invention of her hair product came to her in a dream. Although it was thought she did this to help African American women conform their hair to that of whites, she argued that she created the treatment in order to encourage good treatment and growth in African American women’s hair. She began selling her product door-door. In due time she sophisticated her marketing approach and by 1906 she and her husband Charles Joseph Walker toured the country promoting her hair products. She moved to a mail order operation and established a beauty training school. “In 1910 they moved the central operations to Indianapolis, then the country’s largest manufacturing base, to utilize that city’s access to eight major railway systems.”

Although illiterate when she started her business, Walker took lessons in public speaking, penmanship and developed a striking personality, wearing fine clothing and employing a chauffeur-driven electric carriage. She was to establish a tradition of giving back to the community by contributing to African American orphanages, old-age homes, schools, colleges, and a new civil rights organization, the NAACP. The first self-made millionaires, Walker succeeded despite being an orphan. Madame CJ Walker’s contributions in hair care established her as a prominent role model to woman, still, today, as “one of the most successful business executives in the early half of the twentieth century”.

For more information, see the Engineering Pathway‘s resources on women inventors, African American scientists and engineers or our engineering diversity website. For curricular resources, visit the Chemical Engineering Education community site.

Also on this date in history in 1975, Congress passes Metric Conversion Act. Also in 1986, Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager complete the first non-stop circumnavigation of the world, nonstop, without refueling their plane, the Voyager. For more information, see the Engineering Pathway‘s resources on metric conversion, airplane design and aeronautics, or Aeronautical Engineering Education.