October 13, 1914 ~ The gas mask was patented on this date by Garrett A. Morgan, inventor from Cleveland, Ohio. Morgan also invented the traffic signal.
Born in March 1877 in Paris, Kentucky to a former slave, he moved to Cleveland at age 18 and found work repairing sewing machines and making clothes. Morgan made enough money to open his own sewing machine repair shop in 1907. He was so successful that he expanded his business two years later to include making clothes, using equipment he had built himself. A year before he had helped form the Cleveland Association of Colored Men.
The same skills that made Morgan a successful inventor and businessman also fired curiosity and drove his inventions. He would see and then go about trying to find something that filled the need. If that something didn't exist, he would make it himself. He had done this with his sewing equipment business, to great success. (He had 32 employees.)
Morgan saw that people who fought fires had other reasons to go into tunnels filled with smoke and fumes had no means of protecting themselves from breathing the bad air. So, he invented what would eventually become the gas mask. His device became an overnight sensation on July 25, 1916, when he used it to perfection in rescuing several people trapped underground after an explosion at the Cleveland Waterworks. The feat made the national news, and soon Morgan received orders from fire departments across the country. He branched out again in 1920, starting a newspaper, the
Cleveland Call. The newspaper was a success, and he soon bought a home and a car. (Some historians say that he was the first African American to own a car). He died in 1963 after a long and successful life. His two outstanding inventions live on.
By Tiffani Addison
