Lewis Latimer

Lewis Latimer was an American inventor and draftsman whose 1881 patent for a method of manufacturing carbon filaments made incandescent electric lamps far more durable and affordable, helping electric lighting move from a laboratory curiosity toward a practical mass-market product. Latimer worked as a draftsman for Alexander Graham Bell, drafting the patent drawings for Bell's telephone in 1876, and later for Hiram Maxim's United States Electric Lighting Company before joining Thomas Edison's Edison Electric Light Company in 1884, where he supervised drafting and patent litigation as one of the few African American members of Edison's engineering staff, later informally called the Edison Pioneers. Latimer also wrote one of the first textbooks on electric lighting, Incandescent Electric Lighting: A Practical Description of the Edison System, published in 1890.