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IDKMYDE: The Man Who Made the Light Stay On · The Breakfast Club

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: The man who made the lights stay on. We'll come
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: back know at all.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: To another episode of the most anticipated podcast where on
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: the Black Effect Podcast Network, entitled.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: I didn't know, maybe you didn't either. Who is you?
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: I'm your host b dot and I hope you're sharing
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: this content because myself, along with the team, put a
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: lot of work in making sure we came up with
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: fresh ideas.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: This February, we're to talk.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: About people they don't normally talk about during Black History Month.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: You know, they give us the same old civil rights
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  Speaker 2: stories every year, where Rosa Parks wouldn't sit on the
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: back of the bus, and Martin Luther King he had
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: a dream. And if you like Peanut Butter, you should
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: thank George Washington Carver because he helped with the Peanuts Man.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: This season is to introduce new Black history heroes and
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: some of the names, even if you've heard them, We've
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: dug even deeper into folks to give you even more
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: things that I didn't know maybe you didn't either about them.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: Like episode one, I knew Carter G. Woodson invented Black
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: History Week February of nineteen twenty six, but I didn't
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: know he was a coal miner, before that, I didn't
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: know he started high school at twenty years old. This
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: season is for you to share episodes and be a
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: light to someone else. And speaking of lights, when you
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: walk in your house and flip that switch and them
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: house lights come on, who you think made that possible? Now,
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  Speaker 2: usually most people just say one name. Wait for it,
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: They all say Tony, And that's the problem. But before
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: we jump into that, it is customary that we give
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: you three of the most useless facts you'll never need ever,
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  Speaker 2: not a day in life.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Up first, early.
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  Speaker 2: Electric bulbs existed, but they burned out hell or fast,
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  Speaker 2: and they cost way too much to replace them. Your
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  Speaker 2: second useless fact, it was a black engineer to fix
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  Speaker 2: that problem. Not only did he make electric light practical,
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  Speaker 2: but he made it affordable. And your third useless fact,
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  Speaker 2: Las Vegas at nights, Nashville, Tennessee at night, Yo City
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  Speaker 2: at night does not work without the contribution of Lewis Latimer.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: Let's meet him. I didn't know. I didn't know. I
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  Speaker 1: didn't know.
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  Speaker 2: I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know, all right,
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  Speaker 2: So let me tell you where history gets lazy. Yes,
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  Speaker 2: Thomas Edison helped bring electric lighting to market. That part
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  Speaker 2: is true, But Thomas Edison's early light bulbs was flawed
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  Speaker 2: as ever.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, they worked, but they ain't last.
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  Speaker 2: You know that little wiggly thing inside the light bulb
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  Speaker 2: that called a filament, and his filaments were super fragile.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: They burned out helicuick and it was way too expensive
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  Speaker 2: to be using every day. So elect light state a novelty,
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: not an infrastructure. It was like having a may box
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: you can only drive on Mondays. And that's when that
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  Speaker 2: brother Lewis Latimer changed the game. See, he improved that
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  Speaker 2: carbon filament inside the bull, that little squiggly thing. He
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  Speaker 2: made it stronger, it lasted longer, it was cheaper to
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  Speaker 2: produce it. Like Lewis Latimer didn't tweak the light bulb,
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  Speaker 2: he invented the process that they could mass produce the
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  Speaker 2: carbon filaments. The patent numbers two five, two, three eighty
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  Speaker 2: six got filed in January of eighteen eighty two. Look,
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  Speaker 2: without that patent, every light bulb would have been handmade.
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  Speaker 2: Fin't nobody afford that handmade light bulbs? It sounds technical,
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  Speaker 2: but the impact was massive. Canw street lights stay on?
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  Speaker 2: Hospitals could operate at night factories could run longer shifts.
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  Speaker 2: New York could be the city that never sleeps. Lewis
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  Speaker 2: Latimer didn't just improve a bulb. Lewis Latimer made night
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  Speaker 2: life possible. Here's something else that I didn't know. Maybe
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: you didn't either. He also wrote the first technical manual
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  Speaker 2: on electric light. He was training engineers who spread the
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  Speaker 2: system across the country. The book was called Incandescent Electric Lighting,
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  Speaker 2: A Practical Description of the Edison System. It was published
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  Speaker 2: in eighteen ninety. It literally taught America how electricity worked.
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  Speaker 1: And here's the quiet irony.
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  Speaker 2: Lewis Latimer was one of the only black members of
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  Speaker 2: the Edison Pioneers, and the Edison Pioneers was an elite
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  Speaker 2: group that was shaping America's electrical future, one of the
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  Speaker 2: only But you know history history, love of Solo Jena story.
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  Speaker 2: So Thomas Edison he became the headline, and Lewis Latimer
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  Speaker 2: he became the footnote. Even though his work is still
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  Speaker 2: lighting our streets today. Ain't it always interesting how inventions
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  Speaker 2: get remembered but the infrastructure gets erased.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: A century ago. Carter G.
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  Speaker 2: Woodson, who graduated high school and just two years after
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  Speaker 2: starting at the age of twenty. He warned us the
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  Speaker 2: Black contributions were power the world, while our names would
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  Speaker 2: disappear from the Rector. From the Rectord. Lewis Latimer proves
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  Speaker 2: his point perfectly. The light stayed on. The credit didn't
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  Speaker 2: hidden in plain sights, and I didn't know.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: Maybe you didn't either. I