The Colored Inventor
The Colored Inventor
A Record of Fifty Years
Book Excerpt
766 to 1842, and his biographer says he amassed a competence from his invention and lived in leisurely comfort as a consequence.
Still another instance is that of Robert Benjamin Lewis, who was born in Gardiner, Me., in 1802. He invented a machine for picking oakum, which machine is said to be in use to-day in all the essential particulars of its original form by the shipbuilding interests of Maine, especially at Bath.
It is of common knowledge that in the South, prior to the War of the Rebellion, the burden of her industries, mechanical as well as agricultural, fell upon the colored population. They formed the great majority of her mechanics and skilled artisans as well as of her ordinary laborers, and from this class of workmen came a great variety of the ordinary mechanical appliances, the invention of which grew directly out of the problems presented by their daily employment.
There has been a somewhat persistent rumor that a slave either invented the cotton gin or gave to Eli Whitney
FREE EBOOKS AND DEALS
(view all)Popular books in History, African-American Studies
Readers reviews
0.0
LoginSign up
Be the first to review this book