Lewis Latimer: Improve the System Until Ordinary Life Changes

Lewis Latimer was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, to parents who had escaped slavery. With no formal schooling available to him, he taught himself mechanical drawing and became skilled enough as a draftsman to work on the patent drawings for Alexander Graham Bell's telephone.

In 1880, Latimer joined the U.S. Electric Lighting Company and turned his attention to a problem holding back the still-new electric bulb: filaments that burned out fast and cost too much to replace. In 1881, he and a coworker patented an improved method for bonding carbon filaments to conducting wires. A year later, he patented an even more cost-efficient method for producing them — innovations that let bulbs burn longer and made electric lighting something ordinary households could actually afford. In 1883, he went to work as an engineer for Thomas Edison's company, and in 1890 he published a book on electric lighting that drew on everything he'd learned.

What he left behind

• Patented an improved method for attaching carbon filaments to conducting wires, in 1881
• Patented a more cost-efficient process for manufacturing carbon filaments in 1882, extending bulb life and lowering costs
• Drew the patent drawings for Alexander Graham Bell's telephone
• Published a book on electric lighting in 1890
• Joined the Edison Pioneers, a group of engineers who had worked closely with Thomas Edison

Incandescent lighting in the early 1880s was new, expensive, and short-lived. Latimer's filament work was part of what made it durable and commercially viable for everyday life.

"Improve the system until ordinary life changes."

About this set

Latimer's card is one of six in Set 1A — Lightbearers, part of the Continuum: Builders, Thinkers & Strategists digital postcard collection. Lightbearers gathers inventors and scientists whose work quite literally changed how people lived, worked, and moved through the world.

Shop the Lightbearers set or get the Complete Collection (all 12 cards).