African-American Railroader Month - Celebrating Leadership
Andrew Beard, born a slave in Birmingham, Alabama in 1849, invented the limb-saving device known as the "Jenny" coupler as well as plows and a rotary steam engine.
At the age of 15, Beard was emancipated and by 16 was married and farming. In addition to farming, Beard was a carpenter, blacksmith, a railroad worker, a businessman and finally an inventor. In 1881, he patented his first invention, a plow, and sold it for $4,000 in 1884.
Always looking for ways to improve his invention, he patented another one in 1887 and sold it for $5,200. With money in hand, he went into the real-estate business turning a profit of $30,000.
While claiming his 1892, invention of a rotary steam engine was cheaper to build and operate than conventional steam engines; he began work on the automatic car coupler idea. At that time, car coupling was done manually, many times at the expense of a limb.
The "Jenny" coupler secured cars by having two cars bump into each other instead of having to drop a pin at the precise time connecting the cars. Beard was issued his patent on Nov. 23, 1897. Selling the rights to his invention brought Beard $50,000 revolutionizing the railroad industry. In 1899, the "Jenny" coupler was improved and is a forerunner of today's automatic coupler.
James C. Jones, an African-American laborer on electric railroads in the late 1800s, envisioned a ratchet drill frame that could speed up the process of drilling holes in iron rails for the interlacing of wire on electrified railroad tracks.
The process at the time took 20 minutes to drill one hole. Jones' drill frame sped up the process by allowing workers to drill six holes in 14 minutes. Jones' conception of this idea occurred only a short time after he began work on the railroad.
When the news of this invention hit the streets on Jan. 26, 1895, electric railroad companies immediately saw the benefits of the time and labor saving device.
A new era for the electric railroad industry was ushered in with the help of this valuable machine by James C. Jones of Cleveland, Ohio.