Granville Woods
Channel: Vanessa Taylor
Date: 15/01/2014

Granville Tailer Woods (April 23, 1856 -- January 30, 1910) was an African-American inventor who held more than 50 patents.
Over the course of his lifetime Granville Woods would obtain more than 50 patents for inventions including an automatic brake and an egg incubator and for improvements to other inventions such as safety circuits, telegraph, telephone, and phonograph. He died on January 30, 1910 in New York City, having sold a number of his devices to such companies as Westinghouse, General Electric and American Engineering
Woods developed several improvements to the railroad system, and was referred to by some as the "Black Edison."

In 1885, Woods patented an apparatus which was a combination of a telephone and a telegraph. The device, which he called "telegraphony", would allow a telegraph station to send voice and telegraph messages over a single wire. He sold the rights to this device to the American Bell Telephone Company. 

Thomas Edison later filed a claim to the ownership of this patent.