Lewis Howard Latimer (September 4, 1848 – December 11, 1928) was an American inventor and patent draftsman. His inventions included an evaporative air conditioner, an improved process for manufacturing carbon filaments for electric light bulbs, and an improved toilet system for railroad cars. In 1884, he joined the Edison Electric Light Company where he worked as a draftsman. The Lewis H. Latimer House, his landmarked former residence, is located near the Latimer Projects at 34–41 137th Street in Flushing, Queens, New York City.
Family, service, and drafting
Lewis Howard Latimer was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, the youngest of four children of Rebecca Latimer (1823–1910) and George Latimer. Before his birth, his parents escaped from slavery in Virginia and fled to Boston in October 1842. Shortly after their arrival, George Latimer was arrested under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, and his case became a widely publicized abolitionist cause. Prominent antislavery figures, including Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison, publicly supported the effort to prevent his return to Virginia.
George Latimer ultimately secured his freedom after a local Black minister, Samuel Caldwell, raised funds to purchase his release. As a child, Latimer assisted his father in his barbershop. He also helped his father hang wallpaper in the evenings. Following the Dred Scott decision in 1857, which held that enslaved people could not become free citizens by entering a free state, George Latimer—who lacked formal proof of his emancipation—left Massachusetts for his family’s safety.
Rebecca Latimer separated the children, sending Lewis and his brothers to a state‑run farm school and placing his sisters with a family friend. On September 16, 1864, at the age of sixteen, Latimer enlisted in the United States Navy and served as a Landsman aboard the USS Massasoit.
Improving electric lighting
In 1874, Latimer co-patented (with Charles M. Brown) an improved toilet system for railroad cars called the Water Closet for Railroad Cars (U.S. Patent 147,363). In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell employed Latimer, then a draftsman at Bell's patent law firm, to draft the necessary drawings required to receive a patent for Bell's telephone. In 1879, he moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut, and was hired as assistant manager and draftsman for the US Electric Lighting Co., a company owned by Hiram Maxim, a rival of Thomas Edison. While Latimer was there he invented a modification to the process for making carbon filaments which aimed to reduce breakages during the carbonization process. This modification consisted of placing filament blanks inside a cardboard envelope during carbonization.
Latimer received a patent on September 13, 1881, along with Joseph V. Nichols, for a method of attaching carbon filaments to conducting wires within an electric lamp, and another patent on January 17, 1882, for a "process of manufacturing carbons", a method for the production of carbon filaments for light bulbs which reduced breakages during the production process by wrapping the filaments in a cardboard envelope. 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. While at Edison, Latimer wrote the first book on electric lighting, entitled Incandescent Electric Lighting (1890), and supervised the installation of public electric lights throughout New York, Philadelphia, Montreal, and London.
Teaching and community life
Latimer taught English and mechanical drawing to immigrants at the Henry Street Settlement in New York, viewing education as an essential form of community uplift. He was active in the arts; he played the violin and flute, painted portraits, wrote plays, and also composed poetry. Latimer was also an early advocate for civil rights. In 1895, he contributed a written statement to the National Conference of Colored Men addressing issues of equality, security, and opportunity for African Americans. Latimer remained active in veterans’ organizations even after his military service ended.
Latimer was an early and committed member of the Grand Army of the Republic. He served as secretary and adjutant within the organization. For 25 years, from 1903 until he died in 1928, Latimer lived with his family in a home on Holly Avenue in what is now known as the East Flushing section of Queens, New York. Latimer died on December 11, 1928, at the age of 80. Approximately sixty years after his death, his home was moved from Holly Avenue to 137th Street in Flushing, Queens, which is about 1.4 miles northwest of its original location.