Granville Woods
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Granville Woods (
April 23,
1856 -
January 30,
1910), born in
Columbus, Ohio, was an
African-American inventor. He attended school until the age of 10 to begin working as an
apprentice in a machine shop repairing
railroad equipment and machinery. In
1872, he obtained a job as a
fireman on the Danville and Southern Railroad in
Missouri, and he eventually became an engineer. In
1874 Woods moved to
Springfield, Illinois where he worked in a
steel rolling mill. Woods invented fifteen devices for electric railways and received his first
patent in
1884 for an improved steam boiler furnace (U.S. 229,854). In
1887, he patented a
telegraph system for communicating with moving trains, which he called the
Synchronous Multiplex Railway Telegraph.
