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Fouché Publishes Book on Early African American Inventors
 In his new book, Black Inventors in the Age of Segregation, Rayvon Fouché, assistant professor of science and technology studies at Rensselaer, examines the life and work of three early African American inventors. Fouché provides a view of African American contributions to — and relationships with — technology during a period of rapid industrialization and mounting national attention to the inequities of a separate-but-equal social order.
Black Inventors in the Age of Segregation examines the lives of Granville Woods (1856–1910), an independent inventor; Lewis Latimer (1848–1928), a corporate engineer with General Electric; and Shelby Davidson (1868–1930), who worked in the U.S. Treasury Department. Fouché describes how Woods, Latimer, and Davidson struggled to balance their racial identities — as both black and white communities perceived them—with their hopes of being judged solely on the content of their inventive work.
“For the most part, all that we know and think that we need to know about black inventors can be summarized in names, inventions, and patent numbers,” Fouché writes in his introduction. “We know very little, or nothing at all, about what it means to be a black inventor historically and contemporarily. We must rescue the complexity — the greatness and imperfection — of black inventors to understand more fully their relevance in America today.”
“Granville Woods patented devices as diverse as a steam boiler furnace and an electric incubator. Shelby Davidson strove to improve efficiency at the U.S. Treasury by inventing adding machines. Lewis Latimer co-patented a train-car lavatory and several improvements to electric lamp design. Historian Rayvon Fouché documents the struggles of these early black inventors and dismantles several myths surrounding their lives,” said Maia Weinstock in a review in Discover magazine’s November issue.
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