ntor in the number and variety of his inventions.
His inventive record began in 1884 in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he then
resided, and continued without interruption for over a quarter of a
century. He passed away January 30, 1910, in the city of New York,
where he had carried on his business for several years immediately
preceding. While his inventions relate principally to electricity, the
list also includes such as a steam boiler furnace, the subject of his
first patent, obtained in June, 1884; an amusement apparatus,
December, 1899; an incubator, August, 1900; and automatic airbrakes,
in 1902, 1903, and 1905. His inventions in telegraphy include several
patents for transmitting messages between moving trains, also a number
of other transmitters. He patented fifteen inventions for electric
railways, and as many more various devices for electrical control and
distribution.

In the earlier stages of his career as a successful inventor he
organized the Woods Electric Company, of Cincinnati, Ohio. This
company took over by assignment many of his earlier patents; but as
his reputation in the scientific world grew apace, and his inventions
began to multiply in number and value, he seems to have found a ready
market for them with some of the largest and most prosperous technical
and scientific corporations in the United States. The official records
of the United States Patent Office show that many of his patents were
assigned to such companies as the General Electric Company, of New
York, some to the Westinghouse Air Brake Company, of Pennsylvania,
others to the American Bell Telephone Company, of Boston, and still
others to the American Engineering Company, of New York. So far as the
writer is aware there is no inventor of the colored race whose
creative genius has covered quite so wide a field as that of Granville
T. Woods, nor one whose achievements have attracted more universal
attention and favorable comment from technical and scientific journals
both in this country and abroad.

Granville Woods' brother, Lyates Woods, is credited with uniting with
Granville in the joint invention of several machines. Most of these
consisted of electrical apparatuses, but two of them seem to have been
of sufficient importance to attract the attention of such corporations
as the Westinghouse Electric Company, of Pennsylvania. Patents No.
775,825, of March 29, 1904, and No. 795,243, of July 18, 1905, both
for railway brakes, were assigne