Lewis Latimer

Lewis Latimer was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, six years after his parents escaped from slavery in Virginia. His father was arrested in Boston as a fugitive and his case became a cause for abolitionists, who raised the money to buy his freedom. When Lewis was ten his father disappeared, and the boy went to work.

At 16 he lied about his age to join the Union Navy in the Civil War. Afterwards he found a job as an office boy at a firm of patent lawyers in Boston. He watched the draftsmen, bought second-hand tools and books, practised at home, and one day asked to be allowed to try. He became the firm's head draftsman. In 1876 a teacher named Alexander Graham Bell came to the office needing drawings for a patent application; Latimer drew them, working late into the night so the papers could be filed first.

He moved into the new electric light industry, and in 1881 patented a way of making carbon filaments that lasted longer and cost less than Edison's. He supervised the installation of electric lighting in New York, Philadelphia, Montreal, where he learned French to instruct the workmen, and London. In 1884 Edison hired him, and he spent years as an expert witness defending Edison's patents in court. He wrote one of the first textbooks on electric lighting.

He also wrote poetry, painted, played the flute and taught English to immigrants.