African American Innovators: The Story of Granville Woods

Auto-Cut-Off switch Granville Tailer Woods 1839

Granville Tailer Woods (April 23, 1856 – January 30, 1910) was an American inventor who held more than 50 patents in the United States. He was the first African American mechanical and electrical engineer after the Civil War. Self-taught, he concentrated most of his work on trains and streetcars. One of his inventions is the Synchronous Multiplex Railway Telegraph, a variation of the induction telegraph that relied on ambient static electricity from existing telegraph lines to send messages between train stations and moving trains.

Grenville developed a wonderful system, the the Synchronous Multiplex, Railway Telegraph, to send messages between train stations and moving trains.

With the advent of the development of trains worldwide, this invention was yet another major achievement by a black man.

Source: Wikipedia