Hope this thread opens up for discussion. You mentioned a lot of contributions by whites over the years, but it would be nice to identify things that blacks have contributed which are still in use today, like ...
Henry Blair-sparkplugs,
Charles Brooks-paper punchers,
David Crosthwait-Htg/AC units,
Frederick Jones-refrigerated trucks,
Charles Drew-the ******* bank system,
Daniel Williams-1st successful open heart surgery,
George Crum-potato chips,
Patricia Bath-cataract surgery,
Lavon Julian-birth control pills.
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Think about it, what would we do without THOSE products? Particularly potato chips.
I'm a history buff and hate it when people spread misconceptions:
Charles Brooks - paper punchers?
Charles Brooks in 1893? No!
The first numbered US patent for a hand-held hole punch was #636, issued to Solyman Merrick in 1838. Robert James Kellett earned the first two US patents for a chad-catching hole punch, in 1867 (patent #65090) and 1868 (#79232).
David Crosthwait -Htg/AC units ?
No!
Dr. Willis Carrier built the first machine to control both the temperature and humidity of indoor air. He received the first of many patents in 1906 (US patent #808897, for the "Apparatus for Treating Air")when Crosthwait was 8 years old. In 1911 he published the formulae that became the scientific basis for air conditioning design, and four years later formed the Carrier Engineering Corporation to develop and manufacture AC systems.
******* Bank
Dr. Charles Drew in 1940? No!
During World War I, Dr. Oswald H. Robertson of the US army preserved ******* in a citrate-glucose solution and stored it in cooled containers for later transfusion. This was the first use of "banked" *******. By the mid-1930s the Russians had set up a national network of facilities for the collection, typing, and storage of *******. Bernard Fantus, influenced by the Russian program, established the first hospital ******* bank in the United States at Chicago's Cook County Hospital in 1937. It was Fantus who coined the term "******* bank." See highlights of transfusion history from the American Association of ******* Banks.
Refrigerated Trucks?
Frederick Jones (with Joseph Numero) in 1938? No!
Refrigerated ships and railcars had been moving perishables across oceans and continents even before Jones was born (see refrigerated transport timeline). Trucks with mechanically refrigerated cargo spaces appeared on the roads at least as early as the late 1920s (see the proof). Further development of truck refrigeration was more a process of gradual evolution than radical change.
Dr. Daniel Hale Williams in 1893? No!
Dr. Williams repaired a wound not in the heart muscle itself, but in the sac surrounding it, the pericardium. This operation was not the first of its type: Henry Dalton of St. Louis performed a nearly identical operation two years earlier, with the patient fully recovering. Decades before that, the Spaniard Francisco Romero carried out the first successful pericardial surgery of any type, incising the pericardium to drain fluid compressing the heart.
Surgery on the actual human heart muscle, and not just the pericardium, was first successfully accomplished by Ludwig Rehn of Germany when he repaired a wounded right ventricle in 1896. More than 50 years later came surgery on the open heart, pioneered by John Lewis, C. Walton Lillehei (often called the "******* of open heart surgery") and John Gibbon (who invented the heart-lung machine).
Laser Cataract Surgery
Patricia Bath "transformed eye surgery" by inventing the first laser device to treat cataracts in 1986? No!
Use of lasers to treat cataracts in the eye began to develop in the mid 1970s. M.M. Krasnov of Russia reported the first such procedure in 1975. One of the earliest US patents for laser cataract removal (#3,982,541) was issued to Francis L'Esperance in 1976. In later years, a number of experimenters worked independently on laser devices for removing cataracts, including Daniel Eichenbaum, whose work became the basis of the Paradigm Photon™ device; and Jack Dodick, whose Dodick Laser PhotoLysis System eventually became the first laser unit to win FDA approval for cataract removal in the United States. Still, the majority of cataract surgeries continue to be performed using ultrasound devices, not lasers.
I'm surprised you didn't mention peanut butter, that's another misconception. The Aztecs were mashing peanuts into 'butter' hundreds of years ago.
Remember folks, setting the truth about history doesn't make me 'racist', I would have spoken up even if the races where reversed. I just really hate it when people get their history wrong and after a while, it becomes fact even though it's not true.
