Granville T. Woods

Inventor, engineer, and businessman

• Born: April 23, 1856
• Birthplace: Columbus, Ohio
• Died: January 30, 1910
• Place of death: New York, New York

Woods was one of the first major African American inventors, greatly contributing to the technological and scientific advances that followed the American Civil War. Because of his ingenuity with electricity, he became known as the “Black Thomas Edison.” By 1887, he was widely considered to be the greatest electrician in the world.

Early Life

Granville Trey Woods was born in Columbus, Ohio, on April 23, 1856, to Tailer and Martha Woods. Because of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which banned slavery from the future state of Ohio, his birth into freedom was a matter of luck.

Woods also was considered fortunate for his short-lived formal education, because most African American children of the nineteenth century fell victim to the “Black Codes.” These laws excluded African Americans from public education, state militias, and most civil liberties. However, severe bylaws and segregation would force Woods to leave school at the age of ten. Subsequently, he began working with his father as an apprentice, learning the blacksmith trade while repairing railroad equipment and machinery.

While working with his father, Woods was very observant and took in as much knowledge as he could. He often used his earnings to compensate the master mechanic, to whom his father reported, for private lessons. Woods realized early that education was indispensable. When he was sixteen, he was ready to begin his own journey and headed West. He secured his first position as a firefighter at the Iron Mountain Railroad in Missouri. In his ample spare time, Woods taught himself the principles of electricity. His friends helped by checking out library books for him. He soon became an engineer at the railroad company. In December, 1874, he moved to Springfield, Illinois, where he got a job in a rolling mill.

In early 1876, Woods moved back East. His applied knowledge of mechanics and electricity qualified him for classes at an engineering college, although the name of the school is unknown. For approximately two years, he attended school at night. During the day, he was employed at a New York City machine shop, where he worked six half-days each week. He left school in 1878 and on February 6 went to sea aboard the Ironsides, a British steamer on which he worked as an engineer and visited many countries around the world. Two years later, he returned to Ohio and found work as a steam locomotive engineer for the Danville and Southern Railroad in Cincinnati.

Life’s Work

Woods received his first patent on June 3, 1884, for an improved steam boiler furnace. His ensuing efforts, however, involved electrical applications. He and his brother Lyates Woods formed the Woods Electric Company in Cincinnati later that year. There, they developed, manufactured, and sold electrical machinery, including telephone and telegraph equipment.

These efforts led to the invention of the “telephone transmitter,” patented in December, 1884. Woods’s telephone transmitter carried distinct sound over an electrical current, exceeding all telephonic devices in use during that time. However, he never profited from this invention. His means of manufacturing the device were deemed insufficient, and his patent was soon assigned to the American Bell Telephone Company.

Woods obtained his next patent approximately four months later. His “apparatus for transmission of messages by electricity,” which he frequently referred to as “telegraphony,” was a merger of the telegraph and telephone that enabled operators on both ends to communicate messages in Morse code and articulate speech over a single wire. Aware of the legalities of patent guidelines this time around, Woods managed to sell his patent to American Bell and was generously compensated. The sale enabled him to become a full-time inventor.

In 1887, Woods invented “mutliplex telegraph,” also known as the induction telegraph or block system, which enhanced railway travel through electromagnetic induction. By allowing telegraphic messages to be sent and received without interruption, the invention helped dramatically decrease railway casualties. While this achievement placed Woods among science’s elite, he also fell victim to Thomas Edison, who filed a lawsuit claiming that he was the device’s true inventor. Woods eventually defeated Edison’s lawsuit and subsequently turned down a lucrative offer to partner in one of Edison’s businesses. Woods was then known as the “Black Thomas Edison.” In 1887, the American Catholic Tribune declared that Woods was the greatest electrician in the world.

Unfortunately, Woods’s legal troubles did not end with Edison. Woods was sued for criminal libel in 1892 for claiming that James S. Zerbe, a manager at the American Engineering Company, stole his patent for the “multiple distributing station system.” By then, Woods’s assets had been drained by legal fees related to patent disputes. Because he was unable to post money for bail, he served a short jail sentence.

Many of Woods’s inventions were ahead of their time. While his vision of implementing his multiple distributing station system faltered, the mechanism is strikingly similar to linear induction railroad propulsion systems that came approximately a century later. Modern telephones utilize the physical properties of Woods’s telephone transmitter, and his induction telegraph system was actually a forerunner to local area networking (LAN) systems. Woods died on January 30, 1910.

Significance

Woods’s innovation and entrepreneurship helped him overcome the racial challenges of his time. At the time of his death, he held at least sixty patents. He was famous for solving problems through invention. In 1969, Brooklyn, New York’s elementary public school number 335 was named in his honor. On October 11, 1974, a decree recognizing Woods’s scientific achievements was issued by Ohio governor John J. Gilligan.

Bibliography

Fouché, Rayvon, ed. Black Inventors in the Age of Segregation: Granville T. Woods, Lewis H. Latimer, and Shelby J. Davidson. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. Exposes the myths linked to the legacies of three major African American inventors and offers a candid study of their lives and historical significance.

Haskins, James. “Electrifying Inventors: Lewis Latimer and Granville T. Woods.” In Outward Dreams: Black Inventors and Their Inventions. New York: Walker, 1992. Highlights the accomplishments of Woods and Latimer, two of the first major African American inventors in electrical engineering.

Sluby, Patricia Carter. The Inventive Spirit of African Americans: Patented Ingenuity. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2004. Details the history of African American inventors from the point of view of a former U.S. patent examiner. Includes bibliography, index, and appendix listing inventions, inventors, and patent numbers.

Sullivan, Otha Richard. “The Civil War Years and Reconstruction.” In Black Stars: African American Inventors, edited by James Haskins. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1998. A brief look at the life of Woods, highlighting his most notable accomplishments and inventions in the post-Civil War years.