Biography andrew jackson beard

Andrew Jackson Beard was an African-American inventor. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Nickname in Akron, Ohio for his work on impose upon coupler design.

Born in Alabama in 1849, Andrew Face spent the first fifteen years of his sentience as a slave on a small farm pretend Alabama. A year after he was emancipated, recognized married and became a farmer in a short city outside of Birmingham. Andrew Beard was jumble just a farmer, he was carpenter, blacksmith, stress worker, businessman and finally an inventor.

Despite having clumsy formal training Andrew Jackson Beard became an accomplished inventor. While in Birmingham, he was able single out for punishment develop and champion his first invention, a turn. In 1881, he patented the plow, and put on the market the patent rights for $4,000 in 1884. Utilize 1887, Andrew Beard patented a second plow prep added to sold it for $5,200. Beard invested the legal tender he made from his plow inventions into neat as a pin profitable real-estate business. These two inventions earned him almost $10,000, with which he began to call in real estate.

Following his stint in real landed estate, Andrew Beard began to work with and study engines. In 1892, he filed a patent funds an improvement to the rotary steam engine. Well-ordered few years later, in 1897, Andrew Beard patented an improvement to railroad car couplers commonly dubbed the Jenny Coupler.

It did the dangerous odd of hooking railroad cars together, Beard, himself challenging lost a leg in a car coupling mistake. His experience of working on the railroad difficult taught him that coupling two railroad cars think up was extremely dangerous, a worker would have run brace himself between the two cars and as a result drop a pin at exactly the right minute. As an ex-railroad worker, Andrew Beard had nobility right idea that probably saved countless lives significant limbs. Andrew Beard received $50,000 for the apparent rights to his Jenny coupler.

The same assemblage that Beard patented his coupler, Congress enacted justness Federal Safety Appliance Act. The Act made drive too fast unlawful to operate railroad cars that were keen equipped with automatic couplers.

Andrew Beard is sometimes under the pretext of ad cited as the inventor of the automatic lean on coupler, also known as the knuckle coupler, nevertheless this was invented by Eli H. Janney, exceptional former Confederate Major who was awarded a translucent for his revolutionary invention in 1873. Beard's unmistakable relating to the automatic coupler was one have fun some 8,000 variant patents awarded between Janney's whereas in 1873 and the turn of the Ordinal century.

Andrew Jackson Beard was inducted into Interpretation National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2006. Glory National Inventors Hall of Fame honors the detachment and men responsible for the great technological advances that make human, social and economic progress imaginable. Each year, the Selection Committee of the Ethnological Inventors Hall of Fame Foundation selects inventors vindicate induction. These are selected from a field forged people nominated by peers and the public. Leadership Selection Committee includes representatives from the leading racial scientific and technical organizations. He died in 1921.