Today I was surfing the web and came across an article about Diversity, Black History Month, and the contributions of people of color in history. The article was on the web site of a major corporation. Not being a scholar of American History (thanks public school!), I accepted the article as gossip. Except for one part crediting Garrett A. Morgan with the invention of the traffic signal – that part stopped me mid-sentence.

It’s Not True

Several years ago, I had the privilege of residing in Paris, KY, a tiny bedroom community on the outskirts of Lexington. In Paris, there is a plaque at a residential intersection claiming Garrett as a son of Paris and the inventor of the traffic light. However, upon further research, I found out that Garrett did not in fact invent the traffic signal.

Down The Rabbit Hole

Now with that red flag raised in my mind, I began to fact-check some of the other invention credits listed in the online article. What I found was a politically correct article riddled with factual errors that a cursory search would have revealed:

Lewis Latimer

From the article, “significant improvements to light bulb carbon filaments”

Wrong: English chemist/physicist Joseph Swan experimented with a carbon-filament all the way back in 1860, and by 1878 had developed a better design, which he patented in Britain. On the other side of the Atlantic, Thomas Edison developed a successful carbon-filament bulb, receiving a patent for it (#223898) in January 1880, before Lewis Latimer did any work in electric lighting. From 1880 onward, countless patents were issued for innovations in filament design and manufacture (Edison had over 50 of them). Neither of Latimer’s two filament-related patents in 1881 and 1882 were among the most important innovations, nor did they make the light bulb last longer, nor is there reason to believe they were adopted outside Hiram Maxim’s company where Latimer worked at the time. Edison’s company did not hire him until 1884, primarily as a draftsman and an expert witness in patent litigations.

Latimer also did not come up with the first screw socket for the light bulb or the first book on electric lighting.

Granville T. Woods

From the article, “improve electric railway cars and many more for controlling the flow of electricity [i.e. the third rail configuration]… the telegraph system in railways might be non-existent”

Third Rail? Wrong: Werner von Siemens pioneered the use of an electrified third rail as a means for powering railway vehicles when he demonstrated an experimental electric train at the 1879 Berlin Industrial Exhibition. In the US, English-born Leo Daft used a third-rail system to electrify the Baltimore & Hampden lines in 1885. The first electrically powered subway trains, which debuted in London in the autumn of 1890, likewise drew power from a third rail.

Train Telegraph System? Wrong: The earliest patents for train telegraphs go back to at least 1873. Lucius Phelps was the first inventor in the field to attract widespread notice, and the telegrams he exchanged on the New York, New Haven, & Hartford railroad in January 1885 were hailed in the Feb. 21, 1885 issue of Scientific American as ”perhaps the first ever sent to and from a moving train.” Phelps remained at the forefront in developing the technology and by the end of 1887 already held 14 US patents on his system. He joined a team led by Thomas Edison, who had been working on his “grasshopper telegraph” for trains, and together they constructed on the Lehigh Valley Railroad one of the only induction telegraph systems ever put to commercial use. Although this telegraph was a technical success, it fulfilled no public need, and the market for on-board train telegraphy never took off. There is no evidence that any commercial railway telegraph based on Granville Woods’s patents was ever built.

Woods also did not invent the air brake, automatic air brake, electric trolley, or the steam boiler furnace as some have erroneously claimed.

Elijah McCoy

From the article: “The real McCoy?” refers to famous African American inventor named Elijah McCoy… invented metal or glass cup that fed oil to bearings through a small-boretube… car and machine engines might still have to be shut down every few minutes and manually lubricated by hand”

Automatic Lubricator? Wrong: The oil cup, which automatically delivers a steady trickle of lubricant to machine parts while the machine is running, predates McCoy’s career; a description of one appears in the May 6, 1848 issue of Scientific American. The automatic “displacement lubricator” for steam engines was developed in 1860 by John Ramsbottom of England, and notably improved in 1862 by James Roscoe of the same country. The ”hydrostatic” lubricator originated no later than 1871.

The Real McCoy? Wrong: Although the ultimate source of Real McCoy may never be known, we can at least trace back early forms of the expression to Scotland years before Elijah McCoy began plying his trade. The Scottish National Dictionary presents an example from 1856: “A drappie o’ the real McKay,” meaning a drop of genuine Scotch whiskey.[10] The dictionary also says, “The phrase ['real Mackay'] was adopted as an advertising slogan by Messrs. G. Mackay and Co., whisky distillers of Edinburgh, in 1870 and must have been already current by that date.”

McCoy also did not invent the lawn sprinkler.

Garrett Morgan

From the article: “invented the automatic three-way stop sign… accidents at traffic intersections might be an everyday occurrence”

Traffic signal/Automatic three-way stop sign? Wrong: The first known traffic signal appeared in London in 1868 near the Houses of Parliament. Designed by JP Knight, it featured two semaphore arms and two gas lamps. The earliest electric traffic lights include Lester Wire’s two-color version set up in Salt Lake City circa 1912, James Hoge’s system (US patent #1,251,666) installed in Cleveland by the American Traffic Signal Company in 1914, and William Potts’ 4-way red-yellow-green lights introduced in Detroit beginning in 1920. New York City traffic towers began flashing three-color signals also in 1920.
Garrett Morgan’s cross-shaped, crank-operated semaphore was not among the first half-hundred patented traffic signals, nor was it “automatic” as is sometimes claimed, nor did it play any part in the evolution of the modern traffic light.

Morgan also did not invent the gas mask.

Marie Van Brittan Brown

From the article: “In 1966 Marie Van Brittan Brown and her husband Albert Brown, applied for an inventor patent for a closed-circuit television security system”

YES! Finally, they got one correct.

So What?

So, you may be asking, “Ok, what’s your point?” My point is this; blatant errors such as these are either sloppy writing or PC revisionism. If it is the former, then I’m shocked: A company this large has no excuse for posting inaccuracies of this magnitude, its lazy, sloppy, and no better than rantings posted elsewhere on the Internet. It took me mere minutes using Google /Wikipedia to prove or disprove the claims — come on people!!

If it is the latter, then I’m disgusted. That a major corporation would knowingly publish an article which deliberately misrepresents and manipulates historical evidence is abhorrent and a disservice to all races. They should be ashamed.

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