Plays from youtube-nocookie.com once you press play.
Garrett Morgan The Inventor Who Ran Into a Burning Tunnel
In the summer of 1916, men were dying in a tunnel under Lake Erie. The rescuers who went in did not come back. Then a Black inventor walked in, wearing a mask he had invented himself.
Garrett Morgan was born in Kentucky in 1877 to parents who had been born into slavery. He left school after the sixth grade, taught himself to repair sewing machines in Cleveland and built his own businesses. In 1914 he patented a safety hood, a breathing device that drew cleaner air from near the floor. Selling it was hard, so at demonstrations he often hid that he was the inventor and played his own assistant in disguise.
On the night of 24 July 1916, an explosion trapped workers in a gas-filled tunnel under Lake Erie. Morgan and his brother Frank put on the hoods and carried men out. Newspapers praised the rescue, but in many reports his name disappeared and others received the medals. When buyers learned the inventor was Black, many orders were cancelled. He kept going: in 1923 he patented a traffic signal with a third, all-stop position and sold the rights to General Electric for $40,000. He also founded a newspaper for Cleveland's Black community and fought for civil rights all his life.
The facts behind this file
What the record shows
- Safety hood: US patent 1,113,675, 'Breathing Device', 13 October 1914.
- At demonstrations, especially in the South, Morgan often posed as an assistant ('Big Chief Mason') while a white man presented the device.
- On the night of 24–25 July 1916, Morgan and his brother Frank rescued survivors and recovered bodies from the Cleveland Waterworks tunnel under Lake Erie.
- Traffic signal: US patent 1,475,024 (20 November 1923), sold to General Electric for $40,000.
Legends, disputes & careful wording
- Official honours for the tunnel rescue went largely to others, which historians describe as racial bias. No single person is known to have taken his credit.
- He did not invent the first traffic light. His signal added an all-stop position.
Main sources
- US patents 1,113,675 and 1,475,024
- The Cleveland Call (1916)
Spotted a mistake or know a better source? Tell us.
Image & film credits
- all archival images are public domain or CC0 (Wikimedia Commons: Morgan portrait, the 1916 rescue newspaper photo, his 1913 advertisement, US patents 1,113,675 and 1,475,024, Cleveland Water crib, HAER tunnel photo, Cleveland postcards). Video clips from Pexels. Music and sound made for this video.
