Lewis Latimer His Parents Escaped Slavery. He Helped Power the World.

He drew the telephone for Alexander Graham Bell. He made Edison's light bulbs last longer. And his parents had escaped from slavery.

Lewis Latimer was born in Massachusetts in 1848. His father was arrested as a fugitive and almost sent back; abolitionists like Frederick Douglass fought for him, and his freedom was bought. At 16 Lewis joined the Navy in the Civil War. Afterwards he became an office boy at a patent law firm for $3 a week, taught himself drafting at night, and rose to head draftsman. In 1876 he made the drawings for Bell's telephone patent, filed just hours before a rival's. In 1882 he patented a better way to make carbon filaments for light bulbs. Edison hired him as an expert in patent cases; he wrote one of the first books on electric light and helped light up New York, Philadelphia, Montreal and London. In 1918 he became the first Black member of the Edison Pioneers. He was left out of most history books for decades, and in 2006 he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.