Latimer, Lewis Howard, 1848-1928

Variant names

Dates:

Birth 1848-09-04

Death 1928-12-11

Biographical notes:

Lewis Howard Latimer (b. Sept. 4, 1848, Chelsea, MA-d. Dec. 11, 1928, Queens, NY) was the the youngest child of Rebecca and George Latimer. Lewis joined the U.S. Navy in 1863. He married Mary Wilson Lewis in 1873 and had two daughters, Emma Jeanette and Louise Rebecca. He began working as an office boy at a patent law firm in 1865 and soon began sketching patent drawings.

In 1874, he co-patented (with Charles W. Brown) an improved toilet system for railroad cars called the Water Closet for Railroad Cars. Alexander Graham Bell employed Latimer as a draftsman in 1876. Lewis was then hired as assistant manager and draftsman for the U.S. Electric Lighting Company, a company owned by Hiram Maxim. In 1881, Latimer, along with Joseph Nichols, invented a light bulb with a carbon filament, an improvement on Thomas Edison's original paper filament, which would burn out quickly; he received a second patent for an improved method for the production of light bulb carbon filaments in 1882. The Edison Electric Light Company hired Latimer in 1884 as a draftsman and an expert witness in patent litigation on electric lights. While at Edison, Latimer wrote the first book on electric lighting, Incandescent Electric Lighting (1890) and supervised the installation of public electric lights throughout New York, Philadelphia, Montreal, and London.

The Latimer family house is on Latimer Place in Flushing, Queens. It was moved from the original location to a nearby small park and turned into the Lewis H. Latimer House Museum in honor of the inventor.