Yesterday I saw a lightbulb that had a filament that was 127 years old. Consider this: a filament that has outlasted that of every single lightbulb I have ever owned in my life. The Honorable J. Ware acquired the lightbulb at auction. He brought it, along with two exhibits from a resolved Nerf football patent infringement case, to our Federal Courts class yesterday evening. This filament was invented by Lewis Latimer. Indeed this inventor’s history is truly inspiring. I was so impressed I a. had to get a picture with the lightbulb and said filament and b. write this post.

“Lewis Howard Latimer (September 4, 1848 – December 11, 1928) was an African American inventor and draftsman. Though Thomas Alva Edison is credited with the invention of the light bulb, Latimer made significant contributions to its further development.

Lewis Howard Latimer was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts on September 4, 1848 as the youngest of the four children of Rebecca (1826-1848) and George Latimer (July 4, 1818 -c.1880). George Latimer had been the slave of James B. Gray of Virginia. George Latimer ran away to freedom in Trenton, New Jersey in October, 1842, along with his wife Rebecca, who had been the slave of another man. When Gray, the owner, appeared in Boston to take them back to Virginia, it became a noted case in the movement for abolition of slavery, gaining the involvement of such abolitionists as William Lloyd Garrison. Eventually funds were raised to pay Gray $400 for the freedom of George Latimer. One of Lewis’s siblings was named William H. Latimer (1846-1892), who worked as a barber.

He joined the U.S. Navy at the age of 15 on September 16,1864. After receiving an honorable discharge from the Navy on July 3, 1865, he gained employment as an office boy with a patent law firm, Crosby Halstead and Gould, with a $3.00 per week salary. He learned how to use an L square, ruler, and other tools. Later, after his boss recognized his talent for sketching patent drawings, Latimer was promoted to the position of head draftsman earning $20.00 a week by 1878. . In 1874, he copatented (with Charles W. Brown) an improved toilet system for railroad cars called the Water Closet for Railroad Cars (U.S. Patent 147,363), the first of many patents.

In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell employed Latimer to draft the necessary drawings required to receive a patent for Bell’s telephone. He did this in his capacity as draftsman at the firm of Bell’s patent law firm.
In 1879, Lewis was hired as assistant manager and draftsman for the U.S. Electric Lighting Company, a company owned by Hiram Maxim, a rival of inventor Thomas Edison. Latimer received a patent in January 1881 for the ‘Process of Manufacturing Carbons’, an improved method for the production of carbon filaments for the lightbulb. The Edison Electric Light Company in New York City hired Latimer in 1884, as a draftsman and an expert witness in patent litigation on electric lights. Latimer was also an Edison Pioneer, a group of those that had worked for Edison companies over the years. Latimer never worked directly for Thomas Edison, or in Edison’s lab.”1 (emphasis added).
1 Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Latimer September 24, 2008