Garrett A. Morgan was born on March 4, 1877 in Claysville on the outskirts of Paris, Kentucky to two former slaves. He was one of eleven children and his family was forced to live in a segregated portion of the city, so Morgan left for Cincinnati, Ohio at the age of 14 in search of better opportunities.
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Benjamin Banneker was much more than just an inventor. As a mathematician, astronomer, landowning farmer, writer, and surveyor, Banneker was one of the most influential African Americans alive during America’s infancy.
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Hobart “Hobie” Alter was born on October 31, 1933 in Ontario, California, though his family owned a summer home in Laguna Beach where he developed a passion for water sports.
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George Henry Corliss’ steam engine powered the Industrial Revolution and solidified steam as the superior source of power over waterpower.
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Bicycles, motorcycles, blimps, and planes – Glenn Hammond Curtiss was “always eager for speed” and “obsessed with the idea of traveling fast,” according to an autobiography Curtiss wrote with friend Augustus Post. Before the age of 30, Curtiss received the informal title of “fastest man on earth” for his motorcycle races.
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Josephine Cochrane, born March 8, 1839, was born in Ohio but spent most of her adult life living in Shelbyville, Illinois as the wife of a wealthy politician named William Cochran. Josephine spelled their name with an “e” at the end to give it some extra pizzazz.
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How do you tell the story of the brothers who gave mankind the gift of flight? The men who realized ancient man’s distant dream of taking to the sky? It’s a daunting task, but luckily other gifted historians have attempted to tell their story.
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Cyrus Hall McCormick was born in 1809 on his father’s rural farm tucked between the Blue Ridge and Allegheny Mountains in an America that was still developing “beyond the struggle for food.”
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Harvey S. Firestone was born on December 20, 1868 in Columbiana, Ohio to a family of farmers who had resided in the region since the early 19th century. He was an Ohio farm boy who went on to become one of the greatest industrialists of the modern world.
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Margaret E. Knight, born in York, Maine in 1838, preferred a “jack-knife, a gimlet, and pieces of wood” to dolls as a young girl. Her amateur woodworking skills made her sleds the “envy of the town’s boys” while her kites were famous throughout the community, according to Henry Petroski’s account of the young inventor in The American Scholar.
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William H. Miner was born during the Civil War and died during the Great Depression. He was orphaned at the age of 10 after the death of his father and his only son died a week after birth. He nonetheless exhibited an “unswerving optimism, iron will, dogged determination, meticulous management, and supreme self-confidence,” according to Miner biographer Joseph C. Burke.
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