After various positions as a sewing-machine adjuster for clothing manufacturers, Morgan went into business for himself in , establishing a shop on W.
In he opened a tailoring shop; with 32 employees, he manufactured suits, dresses, and coats. In he organized the G. Morgan Hair Refining Co. This company soon offered a complete line of hair-care products. Morgan established the Natl. By the time Morgan was called in and descended the tunnel, bodies from the two previous rescue parties lay strewn across the tube. But eight men were still alive, and Morgan hauled them all to safety. Morgan was indignant. Some five years later, in the early s, the inventor witnessed a horrific accident between an automobile and a horse-drawn cart at an intersection.
Once again, his ingenuity kicked in. Before Morgan, traffic signals only had two positions: stop and go. He purchased acres later that year in Wakeman, Ohio, and transformed it into an African American country club complete with a party room and dance hall. Leo DeLuca is an award-winning writer from Dayton, Ohio. He lives in New York City. Follow Leo DeLuca on Twitter. Already a subscriber? Sign in. Thanks for reading Scientific American. Create your free account or Sign in to continue.
See Subscription Options. The city rapidly industrialized and Cleveland more than doubled its population in just two decades from to When he arrived, Morgan got a job sweeping floors at the Roots and McBride Company factory for five dollars a week.
While there, he taught himself how to fix the oft-broken sewing machines. Soon he became the company's only black machine adjuster. According to Ed Pershey of the Western Reserve Historical Society where Morgan's archives and papers are located , it's likely Morgan made other mechanical improvements to sewing machines that are now lost to history.
In , Morgan was hired away by a competitor who made him that company's first black machinist. There he met a Bohemian Czech immigrant seamstress named Mary Hasek. She was white and he was black. Garrett built and maintained the machines while Mary sewed the garments. Later, he opened the Morgan Skirt Factory. The business ventures allowed the couple to buy a house on Harlem Avenue.
A historical marker there is currently being refurbished. But like all entrepreneurial inventors, Morgan needed to keep creating. An entrepreneur. He referred to himself as the Black Edison. As is the case with most legends, the exact details are a bit slippery. The story goes that one morning Morgan was experimenting with lubricating oils to keep fast-moving hot steel needles in sewing machines from scorching the fabric.
At lunchtime he wiped his oily hands on a lambskin cloth or horsehair, depending upon who's telling the story. Arriving back at his workshop, Morgan found the hair on the cloth where he wiped his hands were immaculately straight. It seemed whatever oils he was using had relaxed or broken down the fibers of the hair. Curious, he borrowed his neighbor's Airedale terrier for a test. The product worked so well that the neighbor thought the canine wasn't his and refused to take it back.
After trying it on himself, Morgan was ready to take "G. Morgan's Hair Refiner" on the road. The straightener became Morgan's money maker and he sold it around the country. Not long afterward, inspiration struck again. Morgan was watching firefighters struggle with smoke inhalation when he got the idea for the safety hood. Filed in September , the patent for his "Breathing Device " shows a picture of a hood with a long tube running out of it to the floor.
The idea was to provide the firefighter with a means "to supply himself at will with fresh air from near the floor Later versions would come with a bag worn on the back that supplied up to 20 minutes of air.
Today this invention is often called a precursor to the modern gas mask, but it's actually closer to what a modern-day scuba diver wears. Despite the ingenuity, Morgan had troubling selling the potentially life-saving equipment—it seems white fire chiefs didn't want to buy a product made by a black inventor.
This is where Morgan's fearlessness comes into play.
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