Granville t woods family
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Granville Woods
Granville T. Woods (1856-1910) spent his life working on improvements to the burgeoning electric railroad industry of the late nineteenth century. His inventions were so prolific that he is often known as "The Black Edison," but unlike Thomas Edison, Woods was considered fortunate to receive an education to help him on the road to his inventions because during this time period, few Black children ever saw the inside of a classroom.
Granville Tailer Woods was born on April 23, 1856 in Columbus, Ohio. Woods educated himself by working in railroad machine shops and steel mills, and by reading about electricity. He often had friends check out library books for him, since Black people were excluded from many libraries at the time. From 1876 to 1878, Woods lived in New York City, taking courses in engineering and electricity, subjects he determined were the keys to the future. Woods managed to scrape together enough knowledge of electrical engineering to invent "telegraphony," a process that was later purchased by Alexander Graham Bell's company.
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Granville T. Woods
- Birthdate
- 1856/04/23
- Death date
- 1910/01/30
- Fields of study
- Telegraphy
Biography
Granville T. Woods was born in Columbus, Ohio on 23 April 1856 and was the son of former slaves. He had little formal schooling when he began his career as an inventor, but apprenticed in a machine shop and learned the machinist and blacksmith trades. He then worked in a variety of transportation and industrial jobs while continuing to teach himself about electricity and mechanics, occasionally managing to get tutoring or take night courses in engineering (he eventually earned a degree).
Woods eventually settled in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he turned his attention to inventing. He received his first patent in 1884 for an improved steam boiler furnace. He licensed many subsequent mechanical inventions to the major corporations of the day.
All the while, however, electricity remained his greatest interest. In 1887, he invented what many consider to be his greatest contribution: the Synchronous Multiplex Railway Telegraph, which allowed
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Coney Island has always had a reputation as a place where people could make their dreams come true, where people outside the mainstream could prove themselves. For inventor Granville T. Woods, it became the place where he demonstrated two of his famous inventions: an electric railway and an electric roller coaster called the Figure Eight.
Woods patented several other electrical inventions including a device called “telegraphony,” which sent telegraph and voice messages over the same wire. The Synchronous Multiplex Railway Telegraph was another of Woods’s inventions. Patented in 1885, it improved communication on the nation’s railway system by allowing telegraph messages to be sent from trains to railway stations. This innovation that helped prevent accidents by enabling dispatchers to pinpoint a train’s location.
In 1892 Woods patented a transit improvement known today as the third rail, the device that allows electricity to power trains without the use of batteries or exposed wires. He originally designed it for trains but later modified it to power an amusement ride known as t
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