THE INVENTIVE SPIRIT OF AFRICAN AMERICANS: PATENTED INGENUITY by Patricia Carter Sluby (Praeger Publishers, Westport CT: 2004)
A book review
11/25/12
...
by Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
This engrossing book,THE INVENTIVE SPIRIT OF AFRICAN AMERICANS: PATENTED INGENUITY, is the definitive reference on black inventors in America.
Its author, Patricia Carter Sluby, is a Registered Patent Agent and a former U.S. Primary patent examiner, whose prior book on this subject is entitled Creativity and Inventions: The Genius of Afro-Americans and Women in the United States and Their Patents (1987). So, her current book arises out of a lifetime of labor in this arcane and vital field of endeavor. Her love for her work infuses each page.
With machine-like efficiency, the book commences with a quote from Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution, “Congress shall have power...[t]o promote progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” Her “Preface” commences with a 1925 quote from Maggie Lena Walker, the legendary Richmond, Virginia, banker and philanthropist of color, that “...in this twentieth century, the woman or man who has brains and uses them will succeed.” The book follows with “Acknowledgments,” “Introduction,” 7 substantive, profusely illustrated/photo-laden, chapters; a “Conclusion,” “Appendix I: Minorities in the Practice of Intellectual Property,” “Appendix II: Roster of African American Patentees: Utility grants from 1821;” notes, bibliography, and index—altogether some 313 pages.
Beginning with an 1833 quotation from Edward H. Everett's address to the Massachusetts Colonization Society, Patricia Carter Sluby's “Preface” establishes right away that blackness is anciently synonymous with invention. An 1886 edition of the A.M.E. Church Review contains an article by Professor R. R. Wright, which cites Everett:
“Go back to an earlier period in the history of the black race. See what they were and what they did three thousand years ago, in the period of their glory, when they occupied the forefront in the march of civilization; when they occupied, in fact, the whole civilized world of their time...We received it from our European ancestors; they had it from the Greeks and Romans and Jews. But,” said he, “where did the Greeks and Romans and Jews get it? They derived it from Ethiopia and Egypt—in a word, from Africa.”
African slaves, being non-citizens—as all blacks were, prior to the U.S. Constitution being later amended-- could not hold patents, a form of intellectual property, until after the Civil War. Such inventions were registered in their masters' names, or in the names of other whites. Paradoxically, Jefferson Davis, later President of the Confederacy, had earlier attempted to procure a patent for a propeller riverboat invented by Benjamin T. Montgomery, a slave of his brother, Joseph, in Mississippi. This device was used by the Confederate Navy in the Civil War. Montgomery, who had been encouraged to read and write by his benevolent master, died in 1878, being born in 1819 in Virginia.
Sluby's marvelous book is full of many such anecdotes and raconteurs, as that of Benny Montgomery —far too many to mention here! It shall suffice to say that this book lists and describes every invention by blacks in America, including some inventions which are traditionally attributed to whites, like the cotton gin. Short autobiographical sketches are also given of such prolific mavens as Garrett Morgan, Granville T. Woods, Lewis Latimer, Dr. Percy Julian; along side these are those, like Henrietta Bradbury, a Chicago housewife who developed and patented a torpedo firing mechanism in 1945!
It covers modern day inventors like Dannette Connor-Ward, who invented the herbicide “Round-Up” in her employ at Monsanto, Lonnie Johnson who invented the “Super-Soaker squirt gun” and others in such disparate fields as nuclear physics, ophthalmology, and sublimated civil rights veteran, Bob Moses' “Algebra Project” to bring math literacy to school age children.
Reward yourself! Buy and read this book!
#30
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A book review
11/25/12
...
by Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
This engrossing book,THE INVENTIVE SPIRIT OF AFRICAN AMERICANS: PATENTED INGENUITY, is the definitive reference on black inventors in America.
Its author, Patricia Carter Sluby, is a Registered Patent Agent and a former U.S. Primary patent examiner, whose prior book on this subject is entitled Creativity and Inventions: The Genius of Afro-Americans and Women in the United States and Their Patents (1987). So, her current book arises out of a lifetime of labor in this arcane and vital field of endeavor. Her love for her work infuses each page.
With machine-like efficiency, the book commences with a quote from Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution, “Congress shall have power...[t]o promote progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” Her “Preface” commences with a 1925 quote from Maggie Lena Walker, the legendary Richmond, Virginia, banker and philanthropist of color, that “...in this twentieth century, the woman or man who has brains and uses them will succeed.” The book follows with “Acknowledgments,” “Introduction,” 7 substantive, profusely illustrated/photo-laden, chapters; a “Conclusion,” “Appendix I: Minorities in the Practice of Intellectual Property,” “Appendix II: Roster of African American Patentees: Utility grants from 1821;” notes, bibliography, and index—altogether some 313 pages.
Beginning with an 1833 quotation from Edward H. Everett's address to the Massachusetts Colonization Society, Patricia Carter Sluby's “Preface” establishes right away that blackness is anciently synonymous with invention. An 1886 edition of the A.M.E. Church Review contains an article by Professor R. R. Wright, which cites Everett:
“Go back to an earlier period in the history of the black race. See what they were and what they did three thousand years ago, in the period of their glory, when they occupied the forefront in the march of civilization; when they occupied, in fact, the whole civilized world of their time...We received it from our European ancestors; they had it from the Greeks and Romans and Jews. But,” said he, “where did the Greeks and Romans and Jews get it? They derived it from Ethiopia and Egypt—in a word, from Africa.”
African slaves, being non-citizens—as all blacks were, prior to the U.S. Constitution being later amended-- could not hold patents, a form of intellectual property, until after the Civil War. Such inventions were registered in their masters' names, or in the names of other whites. Paradoxically, Jefferson Davis, later President of the Confederacy, had earlier attempted to procure a patent for a propeller riverboat invented by Benjamin T. Montgomery, a slave of his brother, Joseph, in Mississippi. This device was used by the Confederate Navy in the Civil War. Montgomery, who had been encouraged to read and write by his benevolent master, died in 1878, being born in 1819 in Virginia.
Sluby's marvelous book is full of many such anecdotes and raconteurs, as that of Benny Montgomery —far too many to mention here! It shall suffice to say that this book lists and describes every invention by blacks in America, including some inventions which are traditionally attributed to whites, like the cotton gin. Short autobiographical sketches are also given of such prolific mavens as Garrett Morgan, Granville T. Woods, Lewis Latimer, Dr. Percy Julian; along side these are those, like Henrietta Bradbury, a Chicago housewife who developed and patented a torpedo firing mechanism in 1945!
It covers modern day inventors like Dannette Connor-Ward, who invented the herbicide “Round-Up” in her employ at Monsanto, Lonnie Johnson who invented the “Super-Soaker squirt gun” and others in such disparate fields as nuclear physics, ophthalmology, and sublimated civil rights veteran, Bob Moses' “Algebra Project” to bring math literacy to school age children.
Reward yourself! Buy and read this book!
#30
