Investor's Business Daily, October 1st, 2007
An elevator ride became a turning point 14 the life of inventor Granville Woods, a peer of visionaries Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse and Alexander Graham Bell.
Elevators needed operators to control which floors to stop at. To call the elevator, passengers would ring a bell, and operators would move the system up or down searching for the right floor.
Woods, a budding mechanical and electrical engineer, felt there had to be a better way. He concluded that transmitting electric impulses over the airwaves -- called induction -- would do the trick.
This idea of induction communication would become a focal point 15f his many inventions over the next 30 years until his death in 1910 at age 54 of a cerebral hemorrhage.
Woods received an unceremonious burial for a man with 60 patents to his name and whose inventions helped fuel the fortunes of AT&T, General Electric GE and Westinghouse. He was placed in a coffin with two infants and another adult, according to a New York Times article in 1975 about Woods' finally getting a headstone and recognition for his accomplishments.
Woods helped revolutionize transportation, contributing to railway efficiency, speed and safety. He also transformed communications, with inventions for sound transmission. One creation was a telephone transmitter that carried sound farther and louder than anything else.
Some say his greatest invention was the induction telegraph, which enabled electronic communication between moving trains and train stations. Before then, railway communication was spotty. In order to communicate signals, trains had to be in constant contact with telegraph wires. The jostling could cause trains to lose contact with the wires, resulting in lost or incomplete links.
Thus a railroad engineer might not know if another train ahead had stalled or if a bridge had washed out until he approached the obstacle. Even then, a train could crash.
Woods solved the problem by applying the laws of electromagnetic induction. He invented an oblong coil that was suspended beneath the train. When an electric current was applied, a magnetic, static-electric field enveloped the train and could send and receive signals from telegraph lines without the need for physical contact.
The invention sharply reduced the number of lives lost in accidents. He was heralded for the invention, but received greater renown in the resulting patent case.
Thomas Edison and another inventor, Lucius Phelps, claimed that each had developed the technology before Woods.
Woods, representing himself, won both cases. Soon, Edison offered Woods a job in the engineering department at Edison Co., which Woods turned down in order to maintain his independence.
The legal challenge to his patent was one of many factors -- not the least of which was being black -- that made it tough for Woods to fully enjoy his successes.
In the post-Civil War era, a racist attitude persisted that black people were not capable of invention. Though being a patently false notion -- as hundreds of patents were issued to black inventors at the time -- being African-American inhibited Woods from receiving the widespread adulation given to white inventors. Similarly, black inventors were not offered high-level positions or promotions of the kind awarded white inventors.
"Not only did he have to face a lack of advancement in his jobs because of his color," wrote Jim Haskins in "Outward Dreams: Black Inventors and Their Inventions," but also "there was no means by which he could ever achieve a position of influence while working for others."
If Woods was bitter at this, it didn't show. Throughout his life he fought vigorously to overcome every obstacle placed before him.
Born in Columbus, Ohio, in 1856, Woods faced a deficit from the start. In order to help his family, Woods had to quit school at age 10 and help his blacksmith father make carriage equipment and repair railroad machinery (child labor laws would not exist for another 70 years).
Woods turned it into an advantage. He absorbed all he could about machinery and electronics.
In 1872 at age 16, Woods got a job as a fireman for a train company in Missouri, where his interest in electricity and railroads got him promoted to engineer.
He parlayed that into a job at a steel factory and then enrolled in night classes in mechanical and electrical engineering. He often had friends check out library books for him, since blacks weren't allowed in many libraries at the time.
He left school in 1878 and, unable to find a job well suited to his talents, Woods signed on as an engineer aboard the British steamship Ironsides for a two-year global tour.
Upon his return, he became a locomotive engineer for a railway company for four years, during which he received his first patent for a steam boiler furnace that improved combustion and fuel economy.
With every new position, Woods pored over everything he could about his trade.
After landing his first patent, Woods and his brother, Lyates, opened Woods Electric Co. in Cincinnati to produce and market his inventions. In the first year, 1884, Woods patented his phone transmitter that boosted sound and distance signals. The technology greatly improved on Bell's original telephone system invented a decade earlier.
Yet Woods faced a problem. If a firm did not have enough money to manufacture or market an invention -- as was the case with Woods -- the patent could be assigned or sold to another individual or company that had the necessary capital.
So Woods' patent became the property of American Bell Telephone -- the precursor to AT&T.
Less than a year later, Woods invented a system he called telegraphony. It combined the communication features of Morse code with voice traffic. It meant that anyone unfamiliar with Morse code could flip a switch and transmit a voice message instead. Because of great demand for the invention, Woods sold the patent to Bell Telephone, reportedly for a generous sum.
Woods' fame passed quickly upon his death. He was not widely recognized for his inventions because most of his patents were sold to General Electric, Westinghouse and Bell Telephone -- a necessity stemming from not having the capital or manufacturing capacity to build the products on a mass scale on his own.
Reports say he died penniless, partly the result of money he spent fighting legal challenges on his patents.
