Lewis Howard Latimer was born on September 4, 1848, and died on December 11, 1928. He was an American inventor and patent draftsman. He created several important inventions, including an evaporative air conditioner, a better way to make carbon filaments for electric light bulbs, and an improved toilet system for railroad cars. In 1884, he worked at the Edison Electric Light Company as a draftsman. His former home, the Lewis H. Latimer House, is a historical site located near the Latimer Projects at 34–41 137th Street in Flushing, Queens, New York City.

Early life and military service

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 traveled to Boston in October 1842. Soon after arriving, George Latimer was arrested under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793. His case became a well-known movement to free him. Prominent antislavery leaders, including Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison, supported efforts to stop his return to Virginia. George Latimer eventually gained his freedom after a local Black minister, Samuel Caldwell, raised money to buy his release.

As a child, Latimer helped his father in his barbershop. He also assisted his father in hanging wallpaper in the evenings.

After the Dred Scott decision in 1857, which stated that enslaved people could not become free citizens even if they moved to a free state, George Latimer—without clear proof that he was free—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 joined the United States Navy and worked as a sailor aboard the USS Massasoit.

Career

After leaving the U.S. Navy on July 3, 1865, he began working as an office boy at a patent law firm named Crosby Halstead and Gould. He earned $3.00 per week and learned to use tools such as a set square, ruler, and other drafting equipment. Later, his boss noticed his skill in drawing patent designs, and he was promoted to head draftsman, earning $20 per week by 1872 (which was worth about $538 in 2025).

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 hired Latimer, who was then a draftsman at Bell’s patent law firm, to create drawings needed for Bell’s telephone patent.

In 1879, Latimer moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut, and became an assistant manager and draftsman for the U.S. Electric Lighting Co., a company owned by Hiram Maxim, a competitor of Thomas Edison. While working there, he invented a change to the process for making carbon filaments to reduce breakages during production. This change involved placing filament blanks inside a cardboard envelope during carbonization. While in England on behalf of the Maxim light company, he taught the full process for making Maxim lights, including glassblowing, in 9 months to start a factory.

In 1884, Latimer was invited to work with Thomas Edison. During this time, he also translated data into German and French and collected that information.

Latimer also developed a version of the air conditioner called "Apparatus for cooling and disinfecting."

In 1894, he applied for a patent for a safety elevator that stopped riders from falling out of the elevator and into the shaft.

In 1924, after the Board of Patent Control ended, Latimer worked with Hammer and Schwartz until he retired.

On February 11, 1918, Latimer joined the Edison Pioneers, becoming the first person of color to do so.

Latimer received a patent on September 13, 1881, with Joseph V. Nichols, for a method of attaching carbon filaments to conducting wires in an electric lamp. He also received another patent on January 17, 1882, for a "process of manufacturing carbons," a method for making carbon filaments for light bulbs that reduced breakages 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 cases about electric lights. While working for Edison, Latimer wrote the first book on electric lighting, titled Incandescent Electric Lighting (1890), and oversaw the installation of public electric lights in New York, Philadelphia, Montreal, and London.

When that company merged with the Thomson-Houston Electric Company in 1892 to form General Electric, Latimer continued working in the legal department.

In 1911, he became a patent consultant for law firms.

Patents:
• U.S. patent 147,363 "Improvement in water-closets for railroad-cars" (with Brown, Charles W.), February 10, 1874
• U.S. patent 247,097 "Electric lamp" (with Nichols, Joseph V.), September 13, 1881
• U.S. patent 252,386 "Process of Manufacturing Carbons," January 17, 1882
• U.S. patent 255,212 "Supporter for electric lamps" (with Tregoning, John), March 21, 1882
• U.S. patent 334,078 "Apparatus for cooling and disinfecting," January 12, 1886
• U.S. patent 557,076 "Locking rack for hats, coats, and umbrellas," March 24, 1896
• U.S. patent 781,890 "Book Supporter," February 7, 1905
• U.S. patent 968,787 "Lamp fixture" (with Norton, William Sheil), August 30, 1910

Writing

• A poetry book titled Poems of Love and Life.
• A technical book titled Incandescent Electric Lighting, published in 1890.
• Articles published in African-American newspapers and magazines.
• A request to Mayor Seth Low to bring back a member to the Brooklyn School Board.

Other activities

Latimer taught English and drawing for machines to immigrants at the Henry Street Settlement in New York. He believed that education was important for helping communities improve.

He was involved in the arts. He played the violin and flute, painted portraits, wrote plays, and also wrote poetry.

Latimer supported equal rights for African Americans. In 1895, he wrote a statement for the National Conference of Colored Men about fairness, safety, and chances for African Americans to succeed.

After his military service ended, Latimer stayed involved with groups for veterans. He joined the Grand Army of the Republic early and worked as a secretary and adjutant in the group. He was also a member of Prince Hall Freemasonry.

Personal life

On November 15, 1873, Latimer married Mary Wilson Lewis in Fall River, Massachusetts. Mary was born in Providence, Rhode Island, and was the daughter of Louisa M. and William Lewis. Latimer and Mary had two daughters: Emma Jeanette, who lived from 1883 to 1978, and Louise Rebecca, who lived from 1890 to 1963. Emma Jeanette married Gerald Fitzherbert Norman, who became the first African American teacher hired for a high school in the New York City public school system. They had two children: Winifred Latimer Norman, who lived from 1914 to 2014 and worked as a social worker who protected her grandfather’s legacy, and Gerald Latimer Norman, who lived from 1911 to 1990 and became an administrative law judge.

In 1879, Latimer, his wife Mary, his mother Rebecca, and his brother William moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut. They settled in a neighborhood called "Little Liberia," which had been created in the early 1800s by free African Americans. The Mary and Eliza Freeman Houses are the only buildings remaining from the original community. Other family members already living in Bridgeport included Latimer’s brother George A. Latimer, his wife Jane, his sister Margaret, her husband Augustus T. Hawley, and their children. Mary passed away in Bridgeport in 1924.

Death and legacy

From 1903 until his death in 1928, Latimer lived with his family in a home on Holly Avenue in what is now called the East Flushing section of Queens, New York. Latimer died on December 11, 1928, at the age of 80. About 60 years after he died, the home was moved from Holly Avenue to 137th Street in Flushing, Queens, which is about 1.4 miles northwest of its original location.

• Latimer was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for his work on electric filament manufacturing techniques.
• The Latimer family home is now located on Latimer Place in Flushing, Queens. It was moved from its original location to a nearby small park and turned into the Lewis H. Latimer House Museum in honor of the inventor.
• Latimer was a founding member of the Flushing, New York, Unitarian Church.
• A set of apartment houses in Flushing are called "Latimer Gardens."
• P.S. 56 in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, is named Lewis H. Latimer School.
• An invention program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is named after him.
• On May 10, 1968, a school in Brooklyn, New York, was rededicated as The Lewis H. Latimer School in his memory.
• In 1988, a group called the Lewis H. Latimer Committee was formed to protect his home in Flushing, New York.
• On September 23, 2023, a gravestone was dedicated to him at his grave in Fall River, Massachusetts.