
In 1884, he was invited to work with Thomas Edison. While in England on behalf of the Maxim light company he taught the entire process for making Maxim lights, including glassblowing in 9 months in order to get the factory up and running. This modification consisted of placing filament blanks inside a cardboard envelope during carbonization. While Latimer was there he invented a modification to the process for making carbon filaments which aimed to reduce breakages during the carbonization process. Electric Lighting Company, a company owned by Hiram Maxim, a rival of Thomas A. In 1879, he moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut, and was hired as assistant manager and draftsman for the U.S. In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell employed Latimer, then a draftsman at Bell's patent law firm, to draft the necessary drawings required to receive a patent for Bell's telephone. Brown) an improved toilet system for railroad cars called the Water Closet for Railroad Cars (U.S. In 1874, Latimer co-patented (with Charles M. Mary died in Bridgeport in 1924.Ĭareer Inventions and technical work Latimer, and his wife, Jane, and his sister, Margaret, and her husband, Augustus T. (The landmarked Mary and Eliza Freeman Houses are the last surviving buildings on their original foundations of this community.) Other family members already living there were his brother, George A.
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They settled in a neighborhood called "Little Liberia," which had been established in the early 19th century by free blacks. In 1879, Latimer and his wife, Mary, moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut, along with his mother, Rebecca, and his brother, William. Jeanette married Gerald Fitzherbert Norman, the first black person hired as a high school teacher in the New York City public school system, and had two children: Winifred Latimer Norman (1914–2014), a social worker who served as the guardian of her grandfather's legacy, and Gerald Latimer Norman (1911–1990), who became an administrative law judge. The couple had two daughters, Emma Jeanette (1883–1978) and Louise Rebecca (1890–1963). Mary was born in Providence, Rhode Island, the daughter of Louisa M. Latimer married Mary Wilson Lewis on Novemin Fall River, Massachusetts.

Later, after his boss recognized his talent for sketching patent drawings, Latimer was promoted to the position of head draftsman earning $20.00 a week by 1872 ($438.59 today).
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He learned how to use a set square, ruler, and other drafting tools. Navy on July 3, 1865, he gained employment as an office boy with a patent law firm, Crosby Halstead and Gould, with a $3.00 per week salary. After receiving an honorable discharge from the U.S. Navy at the age of 16 on September 16, 1864, and served as a Landsman on the USS Massasoit. Īfter his father had to flee and his mother had to split the family, Lewis and his brothers were sent to a farm school, and his sisters were sent to stay with a family friend. So, he fled in order to protect his family. This caused Lewis's father, George Latimer, to flee for his family's safety because he had nothing to prove he was free from enslavement. When Latimer was 10, his mother decided to split the family after the Dred Scott case ruled individual slaves needed to prove they had the consent of their owner in order to legally become free many slaves at the time such as the Latimers had lived free by escaping into free states and becoming state citizens who often would not be sent back to their owners if apprehended by interstate slave catchers. Lewis Latimer also spent time at night hanging wallpaper with his father. When Latimer was young he spent time (before his father left) helping his father in his barbershop.

He was eventually able to purchase his freedom and live with his family in Chelsea, Massachusetts.
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George's trial received great notoriety he was represented by Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison. The day they arrived in Boston, George was recognized by a colleague of his former slave owner and was arrested a few days later, on October 20, 1842. Before Lewis was born, his mother and father escaped from slavery in Virginia and fled to Chelsea, Massachusetts on October 4, 1842.

Lewis Howard Latimer was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, on September 4, 1848, the youngest of the four children of Rebecca Latimer (1823–1910) and George Latimer (1818–1897).
