Black History Month

Myth Twenty and Twenty-One

All through the month of February we are instructed to celebrate Black History. We are going to do that by correcting some of the myths circulated throughout the month of February. Each day there will be another entry of the myths of black inventions.It appears the attitude of many people in our country are the same as those of the commenter on this blog a few days ago who stated, “Robb its pathetic you try to deny other races inventions(whether they invented it or not).” I guess this person doesn’t care about the truth.Actually, I am not trying to deny anybody anything, just correcting some myths that are circulated by anti-White zealots.

Did many Negroes hold patents - yes - but a patent is not an invention. Only the uneducated confuse the two.For the record, I am not the author of the following.

Fountain Pen
Was the fountain Pen invented in 1890

by black inventor W.B. Purvis?

No!

The first reference to what seems to be a fountain pen appears in an Arabic text from 969 AD; details of the instrument are not known. A French "Bion" pen, dated 1702, represents the oldest fountain pen that still survives. Later models included John Scheffer's 1819 pen, possibly the first to be mass-produced; John Jacob Parker's "self-filling" pen of 1832; and the famous Lewis Waterman pen of 1884 (US Patents #293545, #307735). See the history of the fountain pen. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_pen

What about the Fire Extinguisher,

was it invented by black inventor Thomas J. Martin

in 1872? No!

In 1813, British army captain George Manby created the first known portable fire extinguisher: a two-foot-tall copper cylinder that held 3 gallons of water and used compressed air as a propellant. One of the earliest extinguishers to use a chemical extinguishing agent, and not just water, was invented in 1849 by the Englishman William Henry Phillips, who patented his "fire annihilator" in England and the United States (US patent #7,269). To see the history of Fire Extinguishers click here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_extinguisher