Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 7, 1991 TAG: 9102070130
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CLEVELAND LENGTH: Medium
The irony of the renewed threat of gas warfare first experienced in World War I isn't lost on Garrett A. Morgan's daughter-in-law, Willa Morgan.
"I was just thinking about that when they were saying a store had sold out of these things and were searching for them all over," Morgan said. Her husband, Garrett Jr., and Garrett Morgan's two other sons are dead.
"It's like the man said, they are still using the same thing: a charcoal filter. I said, `Boy, I'm telling you.' It's really amazing,' " she said.
"When he was in the Deep South he had to pose as an Indian when he demonstrated the mask," she said. A white friend posed as the owner.
One of his gas masks is on loan from the Detroit Museum of African-American History to a branch of the Smithsonian Institution.
Morgan, who lived in Cleveland, applied for a patent for his "breathing device" on Aug. 19, 1912. He received patent No. 1,113,675 two years later, just five months after the outbreak of World War I and 2 1/2 years before the United States entered the conflict.
By the time Morgan received his patent, Germany and Britain were already mass-producing gas masks, but the patent is proof that he invented it in America's view, said Tom Hollingsworth with the National Invention Center in Akron.
In either case, Hollingsworth said, "With almost any invention we can find a counterpart in Britain or Germany."
Willa Morgan said the gas mask used by Gen. John J. Pershing's Doughboys was copied from the original Morgan design. "They kind of redid it a little bit to be more comfortable for the men," she said.
Morgan's greatest fame from the gas mask came before the United States entered the war. On July 25, 1916, 11 workers were trapped in a tunnel on the floor of Lake Erie leading from a water intake pipe to a filtration plant on the shore. When two rescue crews were overcome by gases, the city turned to Morgan.
Morgan put on his mask and went into the tunnel, emerging with two men - the only survivors - and the bodies of four victims.
"City officials embraced him, they struck off a gold medal, studded it with diamonds and gave it to him. Later he got the Carnegie Medal [for heroism]," The Cleveland Press recalled in 1948.
His mask gained wide use as a rescue device for fire departments, according to the 1970 book, "Black Pioneers of Science and Invention" by Louis Haber. But the book also referred to the prejudice that Morgan faced, noting that he lost orders from the South when it became known that he was black.
Morgan's later invention, the three-light traffic signal, was patented in November 1923. He designed the traffic signal after witnessing an accident involving a car and a horse-drawn carriage.
Morgan sold the patent rights for the traffic signal to General Electric Co. for $40,000, Haber's book said.
Morgan also operated a plant that made hair straighteners and creams, founded a black-oriented newspaper, and was active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and city politics.
Morgan's daughter-in-law has an original Morgan gas mask. It has a hood to protect the wearer and a charcoal filter to allow the person to breathe.
Before retiring, she would visit schools each February for black history month to tell the story of her father-in-law and his vision.
"He was a nut for safety, extremely, very cautious," she said. "I just look at this [gas mask] and shake my head. He did not benefit fully from this."
Morgan died in 1963 at 87. The book "Red Light, Green Light," written by a retired teacher, remains popular with children, said Beverly S. Clark, a social studies curriculum specialist.
by CNB