These 2 inventions that were created by Garrett Morgan still impact our world today. 

Garrett invented  The Breathing Device or The “Safety Hood.” One day in 1916 the city of Cleveland was drilling a new tunnel under Lake Erie for a fresh water supply.

Workers hit a pocket of natural gas which resulted in a huge explosion and trapped workers underground amidst suffocating noxious fumes and dust. When Morgan heard about the explosion, he and his brother put on breathing devices, made their way to the tunnel and entered as quickly as possible. The brothers managed to save two lives and recover four bodies before the rescue effort was shut down. Morgan only made $40,000 off of this invention but I feel as though that was a lot of money back then.

 Fun fact Garret Morgan was the first black man in Cleveland with a car. Morgan worked on his mechanical skills and developed a friction drive clutch. He then created a new kind of traffic signal in 1923, one with a warning light to alert drivers that they would need to stop, after witnessing a carriage accident at a particularly problematic intersection in the city. He quickly received the patent for his traffic signal. He then sold the rights to General Electric for $40,000.

Morgan began developing glaucoma in 1943 and lost most of his sight as a result. The accomplished inventor died in Cleveland, Ohio, on July 27, 1963, shortly before the celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation centennial, an event he had been awaiting. Just before his death, Morgan was honored by the U.S. government for his traffic signal invention, and he was eventually restored to his place in history as a hero of the Lake Erie rescue.