By Les High

Black inventors and innovators like George Washington Carver, who developed hundreds of uses for peanuts and sweet potatoes, and Lewis Latimer, who invented a long-lasting carbon filament for light bulbs, helped change the world.

Scores of other Black inventors, including men with local ties like the late Sanford Thurman and Vincent Spaulding, may have been close to making it big, but like many others, they found the road to riches fraught with peril.

Thurman’s son Franklin believes his father should have been credited with the first viable car turn signal in 1938.

Franklin was one of 11 children raised by Sanford and Ida Thurman at the family’s Hallsboro home in Columbus County.

“My father could do anything with his hands,” Franklin said. “He plumbed our house, put in all the wiring. He was a master carpenter and brick mason. He could read a book about something and master it.”

He also understood the principles of electricity and electronics with no formal training, having left the fifth grade at Artesia School to work with his father in a Hallsboro shingle mill.

“He was coming home from work and saw someone driving a Model T Ford stick their hand out on a very cold day to signal a turn,” Franklin said, “and he said to himself, ‘There’s got to be a better way.’”

Thurman, who liked to sketch and draw, created a design for a turn signal similar to the ones today with a lever attached to the steering wheel. Thurman’s design had three options: L, R and S. The “S” was for “Stop.” 

Early versions of turn signals involved a flag that drivers could raise manually with a lever or a button.

Joseph Bell is credited with the first lighted car turn signal, but his device wasn’t patented until the late 1930s, according to the University of Southern California. Ford and Buick put Bell’s invention on its cars in 1938 and 1939, respectively.

Thurman first sketched his invention in 1935, Franklin said. He affixed working, lighted turn signals on the front and back of his family’s 1929 Model T Ford in 1938.

Franklin said his father sent his 1935 drawings to the Chartered Institute of American Inventors in Washington, D.C., a group that advertised it would help inventors patent unique devices and find a market for them. 

A letter from Chartered described the device as “new and practical. 

“The signal is given without opening the window, thus protecting the passengers from rain and cold…Accidents will be reduced and driving made safe with this signal. All manufacturers of signal devices should be interested in devices of this character.”

Chartered sent Thurman a formal document acknowledging receipt of his design, but that’s the last he heard from them. 

“My father always thought someone sold his design to Ford,” Franklin said. “He filed a lawsuit, but he was a young African American man. He didn’t have the money to fight it. Think about what it would have been like for him to go against the establishment, especially somebody like Ford.”

Thurman did win a patent in 1986 for another car safety invention: a three-light panel that indicated the seriousness of a car’s mechanical problems.

The invention featured green, blue and red lights to tell drivers if they could wait or needed to give the matter immediate attention.

“A man from Canada called to see if he could buy the patent,” Franklin said. “My father asked him if he had any money to pay for it and the man said no, and that was the end of that.”

Thurman died later that year at 72.

Franklin carried on his father’s talents, retiring from Sears after 40 years as an electronics repairman.

The squeaky wheel

Spaulding, an architect who spent most of his career in Washington, D.C., and now lives in Durham, is part of the well-known Spaulding family of Bladen and Columbus counties. He partnered on two patents with fellow architect Columbus Key of Washington, D.C. 

Their first patent, in 1976, was for a bicycle “Spoke Tension Gauge and Adjuster.” Spaulding said he and Key got the idea as they were riding bikes one day, with one of the wheels squeaking terribly.

“So Columbus is on this super squeaky one, and he says, ‘We can fix this, we just got to get the spokes aligned’,” Spaulding said. “Tires back then were a lot heavier than they are today, so the spokes often got out of alignment.”

The two men fabricated a device made of wood, screws and hooks that would provide tension to pull each spoke equally into place.

Spaulding and Key received a patent and proceeded to call “every bicycle company in America, but there was no interest whatsoever.

“We thought that’s the end of it,” he said, “when we get this letter from a guy in New York City who says he can help us. I went to New York to meet him. He’s a funny-looking little guy sitting on a pile of books in this small, junked-up space that was filled with gadgets, and, this is no lie, he was wearing one of those beanie hats with a propeller on it.”

The man liked the spoke tensioner, Spaulding said, but they weren’t confident he could help them given their first impression; plus, a Japanese magazine that catered to bike enthusiasts featured their patent in a detailed article, giving them hope.

“But we never got a call,” Spaulding said. “Looking back, I wish we hadn’t turned that fellow in New York down. Who knows….”

Spaulding believes his and Key’s second patented invention, a small flashlight with a ballpoint pen integrated within the device, had a greater chance of success, but as many inventors discover, getting an innovative product to market is harder than it seems.

Spaulding got the idea from his time in the Army when he had to read and mark-up maps in the dark.

“You can make a discrete note, see what you wrote, and you won’t get shot,” Spaulding laughed.

Though Spaulding and Key got a patent on the penlight, the men never fabricated a device. A working invention isn’t necessarily required by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as long as the drawings and narrative are thorough.

Spaulding hadn’t seen an actual device modeled after his patent until the George Henry White Center ordered a set of five from Amazon for the Black inventors exhibit.

“Man, I can’t believe this. This is great,” Spaulding said during his interview. “I’ve got to get me one of these.”

The George Henry White Memorial Health & Education Center debuted the Black inventors exhibit in February as part of Black History Month. The public is invited to a second showing March 25 and 27 from noon until 4 p.m. The center is located at 390 Farmer’s Union Road near the Bladen-Columbus line. Call 910-840-2540 for more information.