Achievements of a great African-American inventor

Barack Obama’s election as president of the United States reawakened my study of another pioneer who was an African American, George Washington Carver, who  became one of the most important and widely respected people in our nation and in the world. Although he filed only three patents in his lifetime, his work produced an enormous number of new ideas and products that he was not interested in patenting. For example, he worked with peanuts and his scientific discoveries included hundreds of different products derived from peanuts, including peanut butter. He also created more than 115 products from sweet potatoes and about 75 from pecans.

       Let me share with you some milestones of his remarkable life, which can be seen in more depth at About.com under the section on inventors.                                                                     

  He was born in 1864 in Missouri, the son of slaves. As a youngster, Carver tried to get into various schools and was denied entrance because he was a black person. No school was available locally for him. He ended up in Newton County in southwest Missouri where he studied in a one-room schoolhouse and worked on a farm to pay for it. He continued his education, concentrating in art and music, and he became well-respected for his artistic talent. But his interests lay more in science.

In 1890, he enrolled at Simpson College to study piano and art — their first black student. His paintings received honorable mention at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. The next year, he earned a bachelor of agriculture degree from Arnes College and was appointed a member of the faculty at Iowa State College. In 1896, Carver received a master of agriculture degree at Iowa State College. He became the director of agriculture at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama in 1897 at the invitation of the institute’s founder, Booker T. Washington.

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Carver devoted his life to research projects connected primarily with southern agriculture. What he derived and created from the peanut and the soybean revolutionized the economy of the South. He developed crop rotation methods for conserving nutrients in soil and he created many new markets for farmers.

What is interesting is that he did not keep the best for himself. He gave it away freely for the benefit of mankind, something that most people never do. He achieved his goal as the world’s greatest agriculturist, and also had the respect of all. In 1916, he was named a fellow at the London Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts. During his lifetime, he received many honors, including the Spingarn Medal for Distinguished Service in Science, the Roosevelt Medal for Contributions to Southern Agriculture, an honorary degree as a doctor of science from Selma University in Alabama and an honorary membership in the American Inventors Society. In 1938, a Hollywood film inspired by his life was released and the George Washington Carver Museum was founded.

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There seemed to be no field of endeavor in which Carver could not excel. In 1895, he coauthored a series of papers on the prevention and cures for fungal diseases affecting cherry plants. He looked at ways of utilizing the sweet potato, developing products such as flour, starch and synthetic rubber. These were almost incredible feats, but they seemed to come easily to Carver. His mind was fantastic.

By 1938, peanuts had become a $200 million dollar industry and a chief product of Alabama. In 1940, he donated more than $60,000 of his life’s savings to the George Washington Carver Foundation and he willed the rest of his estate to the foundation so that his work might be carried on after his death.

Carver’s fame grew, year after year, and he was invited to speak before Congress. He was consulted by titans of industry and invention. Thomas Edison became so enthusiastic about Carver’s talents that he invited him to move to West Orange, N. J., to work at the Edison Laboratories and receive a salary of $100,000 a year. Carver declined that offer because he wanted to stay and continue his work at Tuskegee.

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Carver died on Jan. 5, 1943, on the campus of Tuskegee. The U.S. government designated the farmland where he grew up as a national monument, and three years after his death Jan. 5 was designated as “George Washington Carver Day.†Two Carver commemorative stamps were produced by the U.S. Postal Service, one in 1948 and another in 1998. In 1952, Carver was selected by Popular Mechanics as one of 50 outstanding Americans. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1990.

Carver was a great inventor and a great man who influenced his era in many positive ways, and who overcame the obstacles of racial prejudice and segregation to achieve extraordinary things.

Sidney X. Shore is a scientist, inventor and educator who lives in Sharon and holds more than 30 U.S. patents.