A man who invented a variety of intriguing products, Garrett Augustus Morgan, Sr. (March 4, 1877 – August 27, 1963) was an African-American inventor. With only an elementary school education, Garrett Morgan, born in Kentucky on March 4, 1877, began his career as a sewing-machine mechanic. Although he didn’t make a book or a movie, he became instead a genius inventor of his time. He went on to patent several inventions, including an improved sewing machine and traffic signal, a hair-straightening product, and a respiratory device that would later provide the blueprint for WWI gas masks.
The son of former slaves, Morgan was born in Paris, Kentucky on March 4, 1877. His early childhood was spent attending school and working on the family farm with his brothers and sisters. While still a teenager, he left Kentucky and moved north to Cincinnati. Morgan's formal education didn’t grow beyond elementary school. He did though hire a tutor while living in Cincinnati and continued his studies in English grammar. In 1895, Morgan moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where he went to work as a sewing machine repairman for a clothing manufacturer. Word of his proficiency for fixing things and experimenting traveled fast and led to numerous job offers from various manufacturing firms in the Cleveland area.
In 1907, the inventor opened his own sewing equipment and repair shop. It was the first of several businesses he would establish. In 1909, he expanded the enterprise to include a tailoring shop that employed 32 employees. The new company turned out coats, suits and dresses, all sewn with equipment that Morgan himself had made.
His most notable creations were a type of respiratory protective hood, a traffic signal, and a hair-straightening preparation. He is renowned for a heroic rescue in 1917 at Lake Erie where he used his hood to save workers trapped in a tunnel system filled with fumes, after other rescue attempts had failed. He is credited as the first African-American in Cleveland, Ohio, to own an automobile. Garrett Morgan was an inventor and businessman from Cleveland who is best known for inventing a device called the Morgan safety hood and smoke protector in 1914. The inventor died on July 27, 1963, in Cleveland, Ohio.