Throughout history, African Americans have provided valuable inventions to the world. Women in particular have provided valuable techniques and technology that shaped and molded the world into what we know today. These women overcame some of the largest hurdles known and gave the world some of the most important things of our time.
C.J. Walker, born on a Louisiana cotton plantation in 1867 under the name Sarah Breedlove, started life as a sharecropper, but became the first female African American millionaire. Madam Walker, as she became known, invented the first hair products for black women.
While Walker's products were designed for black women to be more accepted by their white counterparts, her business and charities were for black students, including donating money to the Tuskegee Institute and lobbying politicians for civil rights. Madam Walker gave young black women a chance to run their own businesses, teaching them how to style hair and run their own beauty salons, giving employment to over 20,000 black women prior to her death in 1919.
Sarah E. Goode
Sarah E. Goode, born a slave in 1850, was the first African American woman to be granted a patent. She invented the cabinet, or hide away, bed. The patent was granted to her on July 14, 1885. At the time of her invention, Sarah owned a furniture store in Chicago and wanted to find a way for a city dweller, living in a small space, to have a bed that could easily be stored when not in use. Her drawings, which show a roll top desk that would hide a bed underneath, are still available for public viewing at the U.S. Patent's office. Sarah Goode died in 1909.
Patricia Bath was born in Harlem, New York in 1942. Through her parent's love and encouragement to focus on education, Dr. Bath became quite adept at science including becoming the editor of her high school science paper. Dr. Bath completed her medical degree in 1968 and finished her ophthalmology fellowship in 1970. Prior to her fellowship, Dr. Bath noticed that half of the patients at Harlem Hospital, where she worked, had marked problems with their eyesight. Yet at Columbia, where she did her fellowship, the cases were noticably fewer.
She took this knowledge and began to care specifically for the eye problems of the black community, which lead her to working with UCLA Medical Center and eventually she invented the Laserphaco Probe, a surgical tool used to remove cataracts using a laser. Bath received her first patent for the probe in May of 2008 and holds a total of four U.S. Patents, all based on around the Laserphaco Probe.
Jacqueline Gonzales - Jacqueline Gonzales began writing professionally in 2010, working for various companies with a primary focus on family, education, home.
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