Meet Granville T. Woods an American Inventor
Granville T. Woods was an American inventor who has been credited with making “subways in New York City possible [1].” He was born in 1856 and held at least 60 patents before his death in 1910.
Woods was an accomplished electrician and mechanical engineer. At a young age, Woods began working at a railroad machine shop, then as a railroad worker shoveling coal into furnaces. Eventually, he would earn the promotion of Engineer[1] while working on a British steamship called the Ironsides [3]. By the late 1800’s, Woods had filed patents for notable inventions which improved the safety of railway systems. One of which was known as the induction telegraph. It enabled conductors to communicate with one another by voice which reduced the chances of train collisions when two trains were headed to the same location [1]. He also invented the dead man’s brake which forced a train to stop in the event that a conductor became incapacitated, and the third-rail, a modification of an existing technology that was adapted for underground railway systems [2].
His many successes and legal battles with the likes of Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, and George Westinghouse, garnered the attention of black-owned magazines which gave him the name “Black Edison”. After Edison lost the rights to a patent for the multiplex telegraph, Edison offered Woods a job at the Edison Electric Light Company to which Woods declined[3].
Although Woods claimed notoriety for being an accomplished electrician and engineer, his accomplishments did not prevent him from dying penniless and then buried in an unmarked grave. He spent most of his life struggling to make ends meet and he was often never paid fairly. In the end, Woods’ body was “thrown in a coffin with two infants and an adult [1],” and it wouldn’t be until 1975 that his grave would receive a headstone[1].
Learn more about Granville T. Woods from The New York Times series Overlooked
[1] Padnani, Amisha. “Granville T. Woods, Inventor Known as ‘Black Edison’.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 1 Feb. 2019, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/obituaries/granville-t-woods-overlooked.html.
[2] Taub, Matthew. “Sold: An 1891 Patent by Granville T. Woods, Innovative Black Engineer.” Atlas Obscura, Atlas Obscura, 30 July 2020, www.atlasobscura.com/articles/granville-woods-inventor.
[3] “Granville T. Woods: Inventor and Innovator.” U.S. Department of Transportation, The Office of Public Relations for the U.S. Department of Transportation, 7 Feb. 2019, www.transportation.gov/connections/granville-t-woods-inventor-and-innovator.
