Celebrating the Black Inventors of the Printing Industry
This Black History Month, let’s honor the black inventors that contributed to paving and shaping the printing industry as we know it.
George Washington Carver
George Washington Carver (1864–1943) invented printer’s ink as one of 325 uses to make legumes profitable. This includes cowpeas, sweet potatoes, soybeans and most of all, peanuts. Developing methods of crop rotation, he alternated planting nitrate-producing legumes and nutrient-absorbing cotton in the same lands in order to keep the soil rich and nourishing.
A majority of today’s oil-based printer ink used linseed or soybean oil as solvent to combine pigments. This kind of ink then dries through evaporation.
Carver was born into slavery and became one of the most prominent botanists and inventors of his time.
“The kind of people at Simpson College made me believe I was a human being,” Carver had said later on when he was accepted in Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa. Before that, Highland Presbyterian College in Kansas had been impressed by his application essay and had granted him full scholarship. But they turned him away when he arrived because they didn’t know he was black.
It was in Iowa where his art mentor, Etta Budd, encouraged him to pursue botany after noticing his unusual attention to details in his paintings on plants and flowers. Iowa State Agricultural School (now Iowa University) was so impressed by his study on common fungal infections to soybean plants, they asked him to become part of the faculty as he worked on his master’s degree.
Joaquin Clatonia Dorticus
Clatonia Joaquin Dorticus invented an improved wash machine for photographs and negatives (patent number 537968). Photographs and negatives need to be soaked in chemical baths during its development to prevent bleaching and staining from residual chemicals and to prevent overwashing.
He also invented an improved embossing photo machine which gives a 3D impression to photographs (patent number 537442).
Dorticus was born in Cuba to a Spanish father and a Cuban mother. He married Married Mary Fredenburgh and had two children together. He lived in Newton, New Jersey during the year his patents were published which is 1895. He died in 1903 at the age of 39 years old.
William A. Lavalette
William A. Lavalette was awarded patent number 208184 for his improvements in the printing press and 208208 for his variation of a printing press.
Not much is known about the inventor. He resided in northeast Washington during 1878, the year he got his patents. He died later on January 9, 1914 at the age of 73.
George Robert Carruthers
George Robert Carruthers (1939-) invented the Ultraviolet Camera or Spectrograph. This invention provided NASA crucial information about the Earth’s atmosphere and its pollutant concentrations. It was used on April 21, 1972 during the Apollo 16 flight.
The invention was able to prove the existence of hydrogen in interstellar space and capture UV images of 550 stars, galaxies and nebulae.
As a child, Carruthers’ father encouraged his early interest in science. At the age of 10, he constructed his own telescope with cardboard tubes and mail-order lenses that he had bought with his money as a delivery boy.
In high school, he won three awards in Chicago’s high school science fairs, including first prize for a telescope that he had designed and built.
For his invention of the Spectrograph, Carruthers was awarded NASA’s Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal. In the 1980s, one of his inventions captured the UV imge of Halley’s Comet. His latest invention was a camera that was used in the Space Shuttle Mission in 1991.
Supporting Black Potential
The inventors above are the few of the many Black people that contributed to the essentials that we use today. We hope this information will inspire more people to support Black talent.
