Page 23 - Florida Sentinel 2-5-16 (2)

Black History: Inventions That Changed The World
JOHN L. LOVE
Frustrated by having to continu- ally stop to sharpen his pencil while writing notes, John L. Love created the pencil sharpener. He obtained a patent for it on November 23, 1897.
The object required the user to turn a crank and rotor off thin slices of wood from the pencil until a point was formed
Four years earlier, Love created
and patented his Plasterer’s Hawk.
This device, a flat square piece of board made of wood or metal, upon which plaster or mortar was placed and then spread by plasterers or masons. This device was patented on July 9, 1895.
THOMAS JENNINGS
Thomas Jennings stands in history as a noteworthy fig- ure for being the first Black person to ever receive a patent, but his life should serve as an example of what was, and what could have been, for Black people in the earliest years of the United States.
Jennings was born in 1791 and worked in a number of jobs before focusing on what would become his chosen ca- reer... as a tailor.
He learned customers were unable to clean fabric using conventional methods. He began experimenting with different solutions and cleaning agents, called “dry-scouring,” a process known as dry-cleaning.
In 1820, Jennings, who was a free man, applied for a patent for his dry-scouring process. Jennings died in 1859.
HENRY BLAIR
Henry Blair was the second Black inventor issued a patent by the United States Patent Office. Born in 1807 in Glen Ross, Maryland, Blair was a free man.
His first invention was a seed planter which enabled farmers to plant more corn utilizing less labor in a smaller period of time. He received a patent for this invention on October 14, 1834.
Two years later, in 1836, Blair received a second patent for a cotton planter. It worked by splitting the ground with two shovel-like blades pulled along by a horse, followed by a wheel- driven cylinder which dropped seeds into the newly plowed fur- row. Blair had been a successful farmer for years and
developed the inventions as a means of increasing efficiency in farming.
It is noteworthy that in both of his patents he was listed as a “colored man”, the only ex-
ample of an inventor’s race being listed or acknowledged on an issued patent.
JOSEPH HAWKINS
Joseph Hawkins developed metal oven racks to aid in home cooking. The oven racks were based on gridirons, which were metal racks attached to a wooden handle and were placed on a campfire or placed inside of a fireplace to heat or broil various types of meat.
Hawkins received a patent for
the improved gridiron on May 26,
1845. The device allowed for differ-
ent items to be cooked at different levels of heat intensity, en- abling cooks to heat several types of food at once.
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