Granville Woods

Granville Woods was born April 23, 1856, probably in Columbus, Ohio, to Cyrus and Martha Woods. Poverty pulled him out of school at ten, and he apprenticed in machine shops, learning to work iron and read blueprints on the shop floor rather than in a classroom. At sixteen he took a job firing engines for a Missouri railroad, then moved through steamship and rolling-mill work, eventually becoming chief engineer aboard the steamer Ironsides within two years of joining its crew. Sometime in the mid-1870s he took engineering classes at a college whose name has not survived in the record. He opened an electrical business in Cincinnati in 1880, self-taught in nearly everything he was about to build.

Woods patented more than sixty inventions, most of them solving a specific problem in railway or telegraph electricity. His 1885 telegraphony device let a single wire carry both voice and Morse code. His 1887 synchronous multiplex railway telegraph let a moving train communicate with stations by induction, without touching a wire at all, cutting the collisions that came from trains running blind. In 1892 he patented an underground third-rail power system, safer than overhead wires, tested that year on a roller coaster at Coney Island and later sold to General Electric. He also built a safety dimmer for theater lighting that cut power use by 40 percent. Thomas Edison twice challenged his telegraph patents in court, claiming he had invented the device first, and lost both times; afterward Edison offered Woods a job, which Woods turned down.

None of it made him rich. Woods sold patent rights to Westinghouse, General Electric, and American Bell rather than manufacture on his own account, and his own company, Woods Electric, dissolved in 1893 after a few years in business. In 1892 a rival, James Zerbe, allegedly stole components of one of his inventions and patented a version of it in Europe worth an estimated million dollars, and Woods was arrested and tried for libel after warning customers about the man in a trade advertisement; a jury acquitted him. Contemporaries described him as meticulous and well spoken, and Black newspapers of the day called him the greatest of Negro inventors, but he sometimes told strangers he was Australian, calculating that the lie would buy him more respect than the truth.

Woods died January 30, 1910, of a cerebral hemorrhage at Harlem Hospital, penniless, and was buried in an unmarked grave in Queens. It stayed unmarked for 65 years, until a historian raised money in 1975, partly from corporations still using his patents, to put up a headstone. Recognition since has run through the infrastructure he improved: the New York City Transit Authority mounted an exhibition on him in 2004 and printed four million commemorative fare cards, and in 2008 a Brooklyn street corner near Coney Island, not far from where his third rail was first tested, was renamed Granville T. Woods Way. He entered the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2006, 96 years after that unmarked grave.

Granville Woods's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Telegraphony invention
  Combined telephone and telegraph signals on a single wire; rights sold to American Bell 1885
• Synchronous Multiplex Railway Telegraph patent
  Let moving trains and stations communicate by induction without touching a wire 1887
• Underground third-rail power system invention
  Safer alternative to overhead wire; tested at Coney Island and later sold to General Electric 1892
• Safety dimmer for theatrical lighting invention
  Cut electricity use by 40 percent 1896
• Woods Electric Company company
  His Cincinnati firm, dissolved in 1893 1887

• 1866 aged ~10 Leaves school at ten to help support the family
• 1872 aged ~16 Takes a job firing engines on a Missouri railroad at sixteen
• 1878 aged ~22 Joins the crew of the steamer Ironsides and becomes chief engineer within two years
• 1880 aged ~24 Opens an electrical engineering business in Cincinnati
• 1885 aged ~29 Patents telegraphony, combining telephone and telegraph signals on one wire
• 1887 aged ~31 Patents the synchronous multiplex railway telegraph after defeating Edison's rival claim in court
• February 1892 aged 35 Tests his underground third-rail system on a Coney Island roller coaster
• January 30, 1910 aged 53 Dies penniless of a cerebral hemorrhage at Harlem Hospital
• 2006 Inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame

• Thomas Edison 1847–1931
  Inventor and scientist whose research laboratory model and electrical innovations transformed modern life. defeated
• George Westinghouse 1846–1914
  Engineer and industrialist who championed alternating current and founded the Westinghouse Electric Company. sold patent to
• Lewis Howard Latimer 1848–1928
  Patented a durable carbon filament process and drafted key electrical patents for Bell and Edison. contemporary Black inventor