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52: The Man Behind The Light
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52: The Man Behind The Light
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Lewis Latimer was born in 1848 to a father who’d escaped slavery in a case that became a national cause. With only a few years of schooling and a stint in the Union Navy behind him, he taught himself mechanical drafting from the ground up while working as an office boy at a patent firm — and became good enough to prepare the patent drawings for Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone. He then patented a better process for manufacturing the carbon filaments inside light bulbs, helping bring durable, affordable electric light to streets and homes, before Edison himself hired him as a chief draftsman and patent expert. He wrote an early textbook on electric lighting and became the only Black member of the Edison Pioneers.
- The fugitive-slave case that shadowed his birth
- How he taught himself drafting by watching over draftsmen’s shoulders
- Why two of history’s most famous inventions quietly run through one overlooked man’s hand