A creative and self-educated inventor named Garrett Morgan filed a patent application on August 19, 1912 for an invention he had been working on. He would market his "breathing device," or safety hood to fire fighters, engineers, chemists, and others working with dangerous fumes¹. In 1914 he officially received a patent for his invention. He went on to perfect his “breathing device” into a gas mask that was used extensively by the United States military in World War I.

In 1916, a group of workers got stuck after an explosion occurred in a tunnel being dug under Lake Erie. Morgan and a team of men wore the masks to help rescue the workers who were trapped from the explosion. The rescue was a success, but Morgan, the first to venture into the tunnel, was ignored for his act of heroism².

Years later, Garrett Morgan witnessed an automobile accident. Manually operated traffic signals could switch between Stop and Go with no interval in between. This resulted in many vehicle wrecks but Morgan had an idea. He was received a patent for a new traffic managing device in 1923³. Later he would sell the rights to his invention to General Electric for $40,000. His improved traffic signal would eventually be replaced by the automatic red, yellow and green-light traffic signals used around the world.

Garrett Morgan died on July 27, 1963 and was unable to attend the celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation Centennial. Prior to his death, Morgan was honored by the United States Government for his traffic signal invention⁴. Eventually, the accomplished inventor was recognized as a hero of the Lake Erie rescue and restored his place in history.

REFERENCES
¹http://www.black-inventor.com/Garrett-Morgan.asp
²http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/theymadeamerica/whomade/morgan_hi.html
³http://www.recordonline.com/article/20070205/news/702050317
⁴http://www.biography.com/people/garrett-morgan-9414691#death-and-legacy