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Garett Morgan - Chandler Simon

By Anonymous

Garett Morgan is an African American inventor who pathed the way for many objects and technologies that are still widely used today. While Morgan is acknowledged as an inventor, I would argue he is an exemplary example of the Industrial Design practice and embodies the qualities and processes of a designer. Morgan identified products and their shortcomings and designed and improved upon them making sure to address human factors of use, product form, and more much like industrial designers today. From the traffic lights that line our streets to improved sewing machines Morgan’s contributions continue to positively impact our society.

 

Morgan was born in 1877 in Kentucky, United States. As a kid, Morgan was forced to quit school and work full time to support himself. At the age of 14, Morgan moved to Ohio to find a job. Despite receiving no formal secondary education past 6 grade he was able to secure himself a job in a factory as a sewing machine repairman. After working at the factory for some time Morgan became expertly acquainted with the inner working of the sewing machine. It was through this exploration, understanding, and firsthand use of the device that he discovered common issues with how the machines were designed. After identifying these issues and understanding why machines broke, their usability issues by workers in the factory, and injuries the machines caused he started to redesign the machine. His machine addressed these flaws, by introducing a belt fastener onto the design of the machine and encapsulated parts of the machine into a new product. He was able to limit the number of repairs it needed while also providing a product that was safer to use and more efficient for the factory workers. Morgan's product successfully improved upon earlier designs and addressed issues that made the machine more usable, functional, and aesthetic just like industrial designers.

 

After having created the improved sewing machine and spending over 10 years in the sewing industry Morgan was able to open his own sewing machine repair business. But Morgan wasn’t only occupied by sewing he would spend his free time identifying problems in the world and design innovative solutions to address major social problems. One of these problems that he noted was firefighters and the danger of breathing smoke during rescues. Morgan knew this was an issue and after testing various prototypes he developed a “smoke hood” that allowed individuals to enter smoke-filled houses and rooms and be able to breathe safely for a much longer period then times while also preventing damage to the eyes and lungs, shown on left. The mask used tubes that drew air that settled at the bottom of a room where it was usually more breathable, while also using a watered sponge to filter for the smoke that did enter into the mask. The mask became widely adopted and saved many lives during its use and even informed the design of the WWI gas mask. Lastly, later on in Morgan’s life and with the introduction of the motor vehicles he witnessed an accident in a dangerous intersection where all types of road users would cross. After seeing this accident and evaluating the traffic signal that was in use, he determined that a better traffic signal could have prevented the accident. He then went on to create the Traffic Signal shown below. This traffic signal included a warning light that allowed oncoming traffic to know if they should either stop, go or proceed with caution much like the yellow lights that we now have in our everyday traffic lights.



As you can see Morgan designed various improvements to existing products that improved the lives of their users and helped ease problems in the various industries. It is clear that Morgan’s contributions saved many lives and helped inform designers for many years to follow. I specifically find Morgan’s story extremely remarkable as I am currently involved in designing a device that improves pedestrian safety at crosswalks just like Morgan’s device from 1923. I believe that as a designer it is important to design with societal impact in mind.  Morgan tackled problems that were causing undue harm and injury on people and he used his ability to examine, assess, and design to design improvement to existing systems or redesign the product in full. All of his products were aimed and geared towards improving human life and solving major problems that faced society.


Supporting Links:

http://ead.ohiolink.edu/xtf-ead/view?docId=ead/OCLWHi2129.xml;chunk.id=bioghist_1;brand=default

https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/history/historians-miscellaneous-biographies/garrett-morgan

https://patents.google.com/patent/US1475024

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