He began his career as a sewing-machine mechanic before patenting an improved sewing machine design and a hair-straightening product, among other inventions. His breathing device, known as a safety hood , later provided the blueprint for World War I gas masks. In , Morgan invented a safer traffic light.
The notable Black inventor , who lived much of his life in Ohio, died in July at age His mother, Elizabeth Reed, was of Indian and African descent and the daughter of a Baptist minister. His father, Sydney, a formerly enslaved man freed in , was the son of John Hunt Morgan, a Confederate colonel. When Morgan was in his mid-teens, he moved to Cincinnati to look for work and found it as a handyman to a wealthy landowner.
Although he only completed an elementary school education, Morgan paid for more lessons from a private tutor. Jobs at several sewing-machine factories soon captured his imagination and helped determined his future. After learning the inner workings of the machines and how to fix them at his factory jobs, Morgan obtained a patent for an improved sewing machine and opened his own repair business.
In , Morgan was working with sewing machines in his newly opened tailoring shop—a business he had opened with Mary, who had experience as a seamstress—when he encountered woolen fabric that had been scorched by a sewing-machine needle.
It was a common problem at the time since sewing-machine needles ran at such high speeds. In hopes of alleviating the problem, Morgan experimented with a chemical solution in an effort to reduce friction created by the needle and subsequently noticed that the hairs of the cloth were straighter. When that worked, he quickly established the G.
