Wave 2 - Antebellum Era Inventions (1820s to 1860s)
ARTISINAL ECONOMY
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ARTISINAL ECONOMY 〰️
Craft makers and the artisanal economy thrived during this period. The earliest patent given to a Black person was in 1821. Activist Thomas Jennings invented an early dry-cleaning method called “scouring” and received a utility patent in 1821 (New York City). He was honored by Frederick Douglas in his obituary in 1859 and is the earliest recipient of a “letters patent”, signed by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams.
Mass ignorance over "Negro" or "Colored" people’s talents plagued the nation, even within Black communities. A man named Joseph Hawkins of West Windsor, New Jersey patented a gridiron broiling meat and certain newspapers thought Hawkins was “unique” in receiving a patent so they labeled him “Genius of the Colored Man” (1895). Later, after a “systematic and protracted investigation” retracted it. (pg. 20). In 1839, an accidental discovery by an enslaved teenager named Stephen – a blacksmith and overseer on Slade farm in North Carolina – led to the creation of the yellow/gold-leafed tobacco. This sold for far higher than regular brown tobacco and became a predecessor for the cigarette business (pg. 15)
To combat the lingering discrimination, a strategy that Black inventors would employ to overcome having their works stolen would be to get “indirect patent protections through the name of white business associates”. Cabinetmaker Henry Boyd based in Cincinnati partnered with a white craftsman to build out his bed-frame design shop. He allowed his partner in 1835 to get a patent on the “Boyd Bedstead” design. By 1845, he became Cincinnati’s premiere bedstead manufacturer and he began stamping the product with his name. White racists began enacting arson on his manufacturing facility and he rebuilt it each time. Boyd retired by 1863.
SEAFARING
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SEAFARING 〰️
Seafaring was still a major industry, which formerly enslaved took to in great force in certain Eastern seaport cities with large freedman populations. Inventor Robert Benjamin Lewis of Gardiner Maine (born 1802) invented an oakum-picking machine useful in Maine’s Shipbuilding interests and in the City of Bath (pg. 11). In 1848, Inventor Lewis Temple of Richmond, Virginia was the originator of a whaling harpoon known as the toggle harpoon, or “Temple’s toggle, the Temple iron, or Temple’s iron” (p.12). Places which have hosted this invention include Sag Harbor Whaling and Historical Museum in Long Island, New York, the Maritime Museum of Bermuda, and one original model is privately owned in Princeton, New Jersey. Like James Forten of Philadelphia, no patent record exists, but all knew it was his invention.
AGRICULTURAL TECH
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AGRICULTURAL TECH 〰️
Sugar played a large role in this steam-driven and agricultural era post-Civil War. The most important of the sugar innovators, Norbert Rillieux’s life is very interesting here (pg. 25-29). He was privileged as the son of a white engineer and mixed mother and had the best education. However, he did not receive recognition for his vacuum evaporation process in ways white engineers would have. His non-patented designs were stolen in Europe and in Louisiana.
Though he received enormous wealth from the inventions, Rillieux died without public recognition from corporations that clearly benefitted from his genius. It was not until his death (and decades afterward) that universities and corporations in Louisiana enacted some plaques at museums and on campus recognizing Rillieux, such as the American Chemical Society's National Chemical Historic Landmark.