Latimer, Lewis H. 1848–1928

Lewis H. Latimer 1848–1928

Inventor, draftsman

At a Glance…

Selected writings

Sources

Lewis H. Latimer enjoyed a long career in the early years of the electrical industry as a draftsman, engineer, and contributor of several noteworthy inventions to the development of electrical illumination. He was one of the many ingenious engineers who added to and perfected the advances made in electrical lighting in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, which are often attributed to the genius of inventor Thomas Alva Edison. While Edison was the undisputed leader in electricity for many years, there were scores of other inventors like Lewis Latimer at work on the many refinements needed to make electrical illumination a reality for cities throughout the world.

Lewis Howard Latimer was born on September 4, 1848, in Chelsea, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. His father, George A. Latimer, was a freed slave who deserted his wife and family when Lewis was approximately ten years old, forcing the youngster to forego his formal education in order to help his mother and four siblings survive. After working a number of jobs as a boy, Latimer enlisted in the Union navy in 1864 at the age of 16 to serve in the Civil War. He was assigned to the gun boat U.S.S. Massasoit under Commander Richard T. Renshaw and carried out his duties in an honorable fashion. Latimer later became a lieutenant in the 4th Battalion of the Massachusetts Volunteer Militia as well.

After the end of the war Latimer secured employment as an office boy in the firm of Crosby and Gould, Boston patent attorneys. There he became interested in the craft of mechanical drawing, necessary for patent applications, and set himself to the study of drafting in his spare hours. With part of his meager salary Latimer was able to buy a secondhand set of drafting tools and with the help of library textbooks taught himself well enough to be hired by his employers as a journeyman draftsman.

During the next decade Latimer proved so skillful that he was eventually elevated to the position of chief draftsman for Crosby and Gould, where he was given responsibility for perfecting the drawings upon which depended the success or failure of patent applications. Most notable of his clients during this period was Alexander Graham Bell, who retained Crosby and Gould for patent work on his designs for the telephone. Latimer was extensively involved in the drawings used for this historic invention, which was granted a patent in 1876.

At a Glance…

Born Lewis Howard Latimer, September 4, 1848, in Chelsea, MA; died December 11, 1928; son of George A. and Rebecca (Smith) Latimer; married Mary Wilson Lewis, November 10, 1873; children: Emma J., Louis R.

Inventor and draftsman. Learned mechanical drawing at Crosby and Gould (patent attorneys), Boston, MA, 1865-79; worked on patent drawings of Alexander Graham Bell’s original telephone, 1876; draftsman and secretary for Hiram S. Maxim, Bridgeport, CT, 1879; received patents for work on Maxim incandescent lamp, 1880-82, and for other inventions; supervised production of Maxim lamps, England, 1880-82; draftsman and engineer for Olmstead Electric Light and Power Company and Edison General Electric; legal advisor and witness for patent litigation, General Electric, 1890-1912; independent engineer in New York City, 1912-28; writer; poet. Military service: Served in the Union Navy during the Civil War; served in 4th Battalion of Massachusetts Volunteer Militia; became lieutenant.

Member: Edison Pioneers, George Huntsman Post No. 60, Grand Army of the Republic (New York City), New York Electrical Society (Unitarian member), Negro Society for Historical Research, Guelph Lodge (London, England), Citizens Club (Brooklyn, New York).

Selected awards: A public school in Brooklyn, New York, was named for Latimer and dedicated to his memory on May 10, 1968.

“Having a creative and inventive mind, and stimulated, no doubt, by working in an office where applications for patents on inventions were being processed,” noted Louis Haber in Black Pioneers of Science and Invention, “Latimer began to work on inventions of his own.” Patented on February 10, 1874, one of Latimer’s first inventions was an enhancement for railroad car water closets. He later received patents for an apparatus for cooling and disinfecting; a locking rack for hats, coats, and umbrellas; and book supports.

In 1879 Latimer left Crosby and Gould to join the electrical lighting company of Hiram S. Maxim, an American inventor and entrepreneur in the rapidly burgeoning field of electrical illumination. Edison had just demonstrated the first incandescent lamp, and Maxim was determined to improve upon and supplant Edison’s invention. After joining Maxim’s firm, known as United States Electric Lighting Company, Latimer undertook the systematic study of electricity and its application to the problem of lighting. So quickly did he master the new science’s complexities that on January 17, 1882, Latimer and Joseph V. Nichols were granted a patent for the so-called “Maxim lamp,” which made use of carbon filament, an improved, enduring filament that was tolerant of the high temperature needed to radiate light.

With his new lamp, Hiram Maxim launched a bid for supremacy in the crowded world of pioneer electricity. He sent Latimer and other engineers to London to supervise European production of the Maxim incandescent lamp, and it is likely that Latimer was part of the team that designed and installed the Maxim exhibit at the Grand Paris Exhibition of 1881. There the Maxim lamp was awarded a secondary prize along with other competitors of the Edison lamp, which took the highest honors.

Upon his return to the United States in 1882, Latimer jumped to another of the many firms vying for control of the evolving market in electrical illumination, joining Olmstead Electric Light and Power Company of New York. He continued his experimentation on incandescent lights, receiving several more patents in the following year for improved filaments and mounting fixtures.

In 1884, Latimer changed employers once again, this time serving as a draftsman and engineer for Excelsior Electric Company, one of the manufacturing concerns within Thomas Edison’s group of electric companies. Thus, within the space of three years, Latimer had been able to migrate among a number of firms hotly contesting the rights to the incandescent lamp with carbon filament, an indication of his desirable skills and of the chaotic nature of the young industry. With Excelsior Electric, however, Latimer had found his home, and when the company was later incorporated as part of the Edison General Electric Company—which later became known simply as GE—Latimer remained a key member of its engineering and drafting departments.

At the end of the 1880s, the many bitter disputes over patent rights for incandescent lighting were settled one after another in federal courts. The most important of these battles involved Edison General Electric against the combined forces of Westinghouse and Thompson-Houston, two of its most powerful rivals. The patent contested was Edison’s 1880 invention of the carbon filament lamp, and the principal challenger was a Westinghouse subsidiary, United States Electric Lighting Company, which had been absorbed by Westinghouse in the mid-1880s.

United States Electric Lighting Company was Lewis Latimer’s former employer, and he had received some of the patents for the Maxim lamp then challenging the patent claims of Edison General Electric, Latimer’s employer at the time. Latimer thus found himself in the odd position of helping discredit the originality of innovations in electrical lighting he himself had designed and patented ten years earlier. Managers at Edison General Electric were not slow to recognize the value of such a witness, and in 1890—the same year his book Incandescent Electric Lighting: A Practical Description of the Edison System was published—Latimer was promoted to the company’s legal department and asked to serve as an expert witness in the lengthy trials then underway between the rival firms. To some degree, Latimer’s testimony was helpful in Edison General Electric’s final victory in these struggles, which ironically tended to undervalue Latimer’s earlier work for United States Electric Lighting Company.

Latimer remained with General Electric in its legal department for many years, making drawings and testifying on behalf of the company’s patent claims. He was regarded as a distinguished inventor and engineer and as such, was of significant value in General Electric’s numerous court battles. As the Goliath of the electrical industry, General Electric prevailed in the majority of its court contests, and by 1912 most of the important battles had been concluded. Latimer’s expertise as a patent trial witness was no longer needed, and at the age of 64 he was let go by General Electric, forced to make a fresh start in the business world.

Latimer spent the remaining years of his life as an independent electrical and mechanical engineer in New York City. He also offered his services as a solicitor of patents, having spent much of his life in the midst of legal wrangling over patent rights. The elderly electrician, who was also a musician, author, and artist, taught night school classes for adults, where he was much revered, and even published a book of poetry before his death in 1928. Though his name is not often found in accounts of the history of electrical lighting, Latimer was one of the many talented designers who helped realize the dreams of men like Edison and George Westinghouse as well as build General Electric into one of the world’s most successful manufacturers of electrical parts and appliances. Upon Latimer’s death, the Edison Pioneers issued a statement about the inventor, as quoted in Outward Dreams: Black Inventors and Their Inventions: “Broadmindedness, versatility in the accomplishment of things intellectual and cultural, a linguist, a devoted husband and father, all were characteristic of him, and his genial presence will be missed from our gatherings.”

Selected writings

Incandescent Electric Lighting: A Practical Description of the Edison System, D. Van Nostrand Company, 1890.

Also author of Poems of Love and Life.

Sources

Books

Haber, Louis, Black Pioneers of Science and Invention, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970.

Haskins, Jim, Outward Dreams: Black Inventors and Their Inventions, Walker Publishing Co., 1991.

Nye, David E., Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology, 1880-1940, MIT Press, 1990.

Silverberg, Robert, Light for the World: Edison and the Power Industry, D. Van Nostrand Company, 1967.

Periodicals

Black Enterprise, June 1981.

—Jonathan Martin