Inventions by African Americans 2

Reading time: 3 – 4 minutes

These devices were not developed by rocket scientists, but that’s the point. We create what we need to help us perform our tasks. Many of these helpful inventions are now so commonplace we don’t think of them as having been invented at all. Often they are so simple we wonder why we didn’t think of them, or presume we could have.

George W Kelley, hot food is in. Kelley brought things to a boil when he came up with the idea of the steam table in 1897. With his table, food could be cooked and kept warm for long periods of time. What would schools, cafeterias, hospitals, and restaurants do without the steam table?

Or for that matter, what would food preparers, who put those tasty morsels on steam tables, have done without the egg beater (Willis Johnson, 1884), the biscuit cutter (Alexander E Ashbourne, 1875), and the fruit juicer (Madeline Turner, 1916)?

Alfred L. Crane, a native of Pittsburgh, who gave us the ice cream mold and disher. What’s an ice cream mold and disher? Today we call it a “scoop.” It allows you to dish out those round scoops of ice cream that fill your bowls and cones.

George F. Grant invented the golf tee in 1899. It was an African American who introduced to the game a “tee” — the little wooden peg you stick into the ground and sit the ball on before hitting it? The tee makes the ball easier to hit. No, Grant was not a caddie! He was one of America’s turn-of-the-century golfers and perhaps the country’s first professional golfer.

R.B. Spikes for enabling us to drive our automobiles without shifting gears. He gave us the automatic gear shift in 1932. We have been tooling along in our automobiles ever since without putting hand to gearshift.

J.B. Rhodes for brought us in from the cold with his invention of the water closet, or commode toilet, in 1899.

Sarah Boone, an African-American woman in New Haven, Conn., improved on the ironing board. Before Boone, ironing was done on, as the name says, a board, making it difficult to iron shirts and dresses. Boone narrowed and rounded the front end of the board, giving it the look we know today and solving the problem of pressing her dresses. She received a patent for her invention in 1892.

Keep all these people in mind when you start your business. Think about how simple their ideas really were and how anyone of us could do the same today. Think about how many toilets there are in this world and how if you would get 1 dollar off of each one you would be a billionaire 20 times over.

You don’t have to be great to invent something great but you have to be smart in order to reap the rewards from your Hustle!

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