Woods, Granville, 1856-1910

Woods is best known for working with electricity in the late 1800s; He also invented safety and communication mechanisms for rail systems; He would tell people he was born in Australia, a fact many biographers now believe he fabricated to garner respect and dissociate himself from slavery in the United States; earning the nickname “Black Edison.”; Woods’s big breakthrough, in the 1880s, was a communication system for railway workers that he referred to as the induction telegraph, secured the patent in 1887; Records are scant, but researchers believe that Granville Taylor Woods (sometimes spelled Tailer) was born on April 23, 1856, in Ohio;

Granville Tailer Woods; April 23, 1856, Columbus, OH – January 30, 1910, New York City, NY; parents Martha J. Brown and Cyrus Woods, mother part Native American, father African American; attended school through age 10; served an apprenticeship in a machine shop and learned the trades of machinist and blacksmith; In 1872, Woods obtained a job as a fireman on the Danville and Southern Railroad in Missouri, eventually becoming an engineer; moved to Springfield, IL worked at Springfiled Iron Works (1874); In 1878, he took a job aboard the "Ironsides", and, within two years, became Chief Engineer of the steamer. When he returned to Ohio, he became an engineer with the Dayton and Southwestern Railroad in southwestern Ohio. In 1880, he moved to Cincinnati, Ohio and established his business as an electrical engineer and an inventor. After receiving the patent for the multiplex telegraph, reorganized his Cincinnati company as the Woods Electric Co, but in 1892 he moved his own research operations to New York City, where he was joined by a brother, Lyates Woods, who also had several inventions of his own; Woods invented and patented Tunnel Construction for the electric railroad system, and was referred to by some as the "Black Edison."; In 1885, Woods patented an apparatus which was a combination of a telephone and a telegraph. The device, which he called "telegraphony", would allow a telegraph station to send voice and telegraph messages over a single wire. He sold the rights to this device to the American Bell Telephone Company; Granville Woods often had difficulties in enjoying his success as other inventors made claims to his devices. Thomas Edison made one of these claims, stating that he had first created a similar telegraph and that he was entitled to the patent for the device. Woods was twice successful in defending himself, proving that there were no other devices upon which he could have depended or relied upon to make his device. After Thomas Edison's second defeat, he decided to offer Granville Woods a position with the Edison Company, but Granville declined; ver the course of his lifetime Granville Woods would obtain more than 50 patents for inventions including an automatic brake and an egg incubator and for improvements to other inventions such as safety circuits, telegraph, telephone, and phonograph.