There have been several inventions by Black Americans, however, many of these inventions will never be known because of injustice and lack of documentation that took place in the United States of America during the times of slavery and Jim Crow. However, there was a Black American man, an unnamed man, who is documented in the newspaper who invented what they erroneously called a perpetual motion machine, though it was really the first gravity car, or a car which is propelled forward by the weight of gravity – also known as a soapbox car.
Today, many people have heard of the first gravity car race being done in 1904. It was actually 30 years prior that the man who created the first known gravity car in the United States of America. He was an African American man who unfortunately is reported to have allegedly died while driving his own invention, immediately prior to it being placed in the fair and recorded officially in the year1874.
The cause of his death is questionable due to not only the times of this having happened – vicious racism – but also the circumstances. The newspaper didn’t even care to report the name of the inventor who died the day his invention was to be entered into the circus for the world to see. This, to me, is highly questionable, and the story below is why.
Taken from The Washington Chronicle of 1874, the news clipping to the left was written with a racist headline using the term “darky” to describe the genius Black American man who invented what they called a “perpetual motion” machine. However, this terminology was incorrect.
The inventor of this car had created a gravity car because the car was run by the weight of gravitation which is thrown forward of the center of motion, pushing the machine to run.
A perpetual motion car doesn’t do the same thing as a gravity car because a perpetual motion car violates the laws of thermodynamics, thus wouldn’t work. What this Black American man made was a gravity car, and it was the first known gravity car ever to be made in the USA, the only official documentation of it in the newspapers as they recorded his death.
It is no surprise that years later, the first gravity car race was documented in the year 1904. Prior to 1874, the only gravity machine was in the railway cars. This Black American man had made an actual gravity car. Could the car go “perpetually” after being started up or was it like a soap box car? We will never know, but …
Unfortunately, as the story is told in the same newspaper, it was supposedly when the Black inventor was turning a corner that the front wheel of the car collided with a tree stomp and threw the man from the car.
The man allegedly injured his head so bad that it is recorded that he died instantly. Of course, this left his invention in the hands of those who could inspect the new vehicle on their own and possibly replicate because even though the inventor had perished, the invention was in tact surprisingly.
Because of the collision, one would think that the accident would have damaged the car because it killed the man, having thrown him so violently to his death, smashing his head against a fence panel on the opposite side of the road.
This is where the story told in the papers becomes questionable.
- The inventor was on a “smooth, sandy road”
- Collided with a heavy sapling (tree trunk) with a “rebound so powerful” that he was thrown from the dashboard and struck by the “flange of the driving wheel” at the same time.
- He supposedly hit the fence panel on the opposite side of the road which smashed his head causing immediate death.
- When the coroner inspected, he couldn’t tell what killed him – the fence collision or the driving wheel.
- The invented gravity car, went “free” and passed a residence and gently stopped in a meadow by a large log, intact.
Knowing about gravity cars today, it is highly unlikely this Black American inventor would have been killed in this manner in his gravity car on a smooth road – injured but not dead. This is highly unlikely, even if his wheel had hit something on the road, it would not have equated death nor being thrown out of the car to the opposite side of the road at 15 miles an hour. Instead at the most, the car would have tipped over, not just roam freely, going smoothly after hitting not only a heavy sapling (tree trunk) but somehow throwing the driver out. At least, this is my take.
The very next clip from the newspaper states that after such a bad accident that threw the inventor from the car, the car came to a gently stop in a meadow down the road, retrieved by those who were following along.
All this news came from “an informant” that assured the machine invented by the Black American inventor would still be at the fair grounds on exhibition for all other “inventors and machinists” to view and use at their own risk.
What’s even more suspicious is that all had been around this man waiting on him to enter his invention into the fair, so they knew his name. The newspapers never stated his name. Instead, the called him a darky, Negro inventor who constructed a wonderful machine. Unfortunately, the other inventors took his invention and used it for their own. No one even knows where this man is buried.
The Black American man was the inventor of the gravity car, which may have even gone “perpetually”, or without an engine after pushed off. We will never know. Either way, this car was definitely the precursor to today’s soapbox cars and soapbox races of the early 1900s as well as the precursor to the engine cars of today.
Before 1874, there was no recordings or mentions of soapbox, or gravity car racing, and in many reports, it is stated that “no one knows” who invented the gravity car. Online historical accounts will generally state that many nameless individuals were probably making them in the 1800s for fun, but if that is the case, the newspapers all across America would not have written about this Black American inventor story so heavily as him being the creator of a a new wonderful machine.
What is certain is that gravity car racing didn’t begin until after this Black American inventor mysteriously met his death- which was after his invention was put on display at the fair.
So where are gravity cars today? Well, they are made and involved in physics education for the demonstration of the different forms of energy and the center of gravity. They are also used in racing for fun and sport, and there are also very fancy gravity cars as well.
As far as actual perpetual motion cars, that has yet to be seen by anyone today. One can only guess, was the Black American inventor the man who possibly invented not only a gravity car, but something even more technologically advanced?
We will never know for sure.All we have to go on are the stories documented in the newspapers.
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