Great African Inventions and Achievments

[AfricanLion777]

This is for those that do not know yet and for those who do to add more to it.

1. Benjamin Banneker
    Nov. 9, 1731 - Oct. 25, 1806

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Benjamin Banneker was born in Baltimore County, the son of a freed slave. He was taught how to read and write by his grandmother and attended a Quaker school. He grew up working on his father's farm near the present town of Oella on the Baltimore County and Howard County border. When the Ellicott brothers arrived to build their mills in what is know Ellicott City, the Banneker's farm provided provisions. He and George Ellicott shared an interest in astronomy and became friends. George Ellicott loaned Banneker his telescope and books on astronomy.

Banneker's mechanical and scientific proficiencies were demonstrated when he became interested in the workings of a pocket watch. In 1753, at the age of 22, Banneker made a clock out of wood, carving each of the gears by hand and making all the necessary mathematical calculations. The clock he made worked for more than 40 years.

Banneker published almanacs between the years of 1792 and 1797. The almanacs contained charts that showed the phases of the moon and planets, and sunrises and sunsets. He also calculated the tides on the Chesapeake Bay. He did his own calculations which required him to be a keen astronomical observer and mathematician. Banneker sent a copy to Thomas Jefferson along with a letter urging him to take a stand against slavery. Jefferson replied that slavery was responsible for the degradation of blacks. Jefferson also wrote that he was sending Banneker's almanacs to the Secretary of the Academy of Sciences at Paris and members of the Philanthropic Society as proof of the capabilities of black people when not enslaved.

Major Andrew Ellicott asked Banneker to assist him in the survey of the nation's capital, Washington D.C. As Ellicott's assistant, Banneker was responsible for the care and operation of the astronomical equipment that was used to survey the 10-mile square area that became the District of Columbia.

Banneker died Oct. 25, 1806. The Federal Gazette, in its obituary, stated, "He was well known in the neighborhood for his quiet, peaceful demeanor, and among scientific men as an astronomer and mathematician.... Mr. Banneker is a prominent instance to prove that a descendant of Africa is susceptible of as great a mental improvement and deep knowledge into the mysteries of nature as that of any other nation."

The Banneker Historical Park and Museum is located in Oella across from Ellicott City.

--Paul McCardell

2. George Washington Carver
    Born circa 1864 - Died Jan 5 1943

Cosmetic and Process of Producing the Same; Paint and Stain and Process of Producing the Same Peanut Products
Patent Number(s) 1,522,176; 1,541,478

Inducted 1990

Agricultural chemist George Washington Carver developed crop-rotation methods for conserving nutrients in soil and discovered hundreds of new uses for crops such as the peanut, which created new markets for farmers, especially in the South.

Invention Impact

At Tuskegee, Carver developed his crop rotation method, which alternated nitrate producing legumes-such as peanuts and peas-with cotton, which depletes soil of its nutrients. Following Carver's lead, southern farmers soon began planting peanuts one year and cotton the next. While many of the peanuts were used to feed livestock, large surpluses quickly developed. Carver then developed 325 different uses for the extra peanuts-from cooking oil to printers ink. When he discovered that the sweet potato and the pecan also enriched depleted soils, Carver found almost 20 uses for these crops, including synthetic rubber and material for paving highways.

Inventor Bio

Born of slave parents in Diamond Grove, Missouri, Carver was rescued from Confederate kidnappers as an infant. He began his education in Newton County in southwest Missouri, where he worked as a farm hand and studied in a one-room schoolhouse. He went on to excel at Minneapolis High School in Kansas. Though denied admission to Highland University because of his race, Carver gained acceptance to Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, in 1887.

Intent on a science career, he transferred to Iowa Agricultural College (now Iowa State University) in 1891 and gained a B.S. in 1894 and an M.S. in agriculture in 1897. Later that year Booker T. Washington, founder of the Tuskegee Institute, convinced Carver to come south and serve as the school's director of agriculture. Upon his death, Carver contributed his life savings to establish a research institute at Tuskegee. His birthplace was declared a national monument in 1953.

More to come.
AfricanLion777

[AfricanLion777]

BLACKFACT:

On November 15, 218 B.C., Hannibal, a full-blooded 'Negro,' marching through conquered territory in Spain and France, performed the astounding feat of crossing the Alps. With only 26,000 of his original force of 82,000 men remaining, he defeated Rome, the mightiest military power of that age, who had a million men, in every battle for the next fifteen years. Hannibal is the father of military strategy. His tactics are still taught in the leading military academies of the United States, Enland, France, Germany and other lands.

PROOF:

Hannibal is usually depicted as a white man, but his coins in the British Museum and the Museo Kercheriano, Rome, show him to have been an African of purest type with rings in his ears. Col. Hennebert, perhaps the leading authority on Hannibal, declares that none of the several differing portraits now exhibited as Hannibal is he, "We do not possess any authentic portrait of Hannibal," he says. (Histoire d'Annibal, Vol. I, p. 495, Paris, 1870). These coins were struck by Hannibal while he was in Italy. In the absence of other information the most logical argument is that they bore his own effigy, the more so, as the several kinds of them bear the same likeness. Above all, let us remember that he was an African.

by J.A Rodgers

More proof :

"It is undoubtedly a fact that the Colchians are of Egyptian descent.  I noticed this myself before I heard anyone mention it."

--Herodotus, The Histories

We now know that modern humanity originated in Africa, and that all modern humans can ultimately trace their ancestral roots back to the African continent.  Herodotus, the European father of history, regarded Colchis, a land located along the western slope of the Caucasus Mountains near the Black Sea, as an African colony.  He not only pointed to the Colchians' black skin and woolly hair, but also to their oral traditions, language, methods of weaving, and practice of circumcision.  Saint Jerome, writing during the fourth century, called Colchis the "Second Ethiopia."  Two hundred years later, Sophronius, patriarch of Jerusalem, described an "Ethiopian" presence in the same region.  Even today, in the same district about which Herodotus wrote, lives a numerically minute black-skinned, woolly-haired community.

Phoenicia was the name given by the Greeks, in the first millennium B.C.E., to the coastal provinces of  modern Lebanon and northern Israel, although occasionally the term seems to have been applied to the entire Mediterranean seaboard from Syria to Palestine.  Phoenicia was not considered a nation, in the strict sense of the word, but rather as a chain of coastal cities, of which the most important were Sidon, Byblos, Tyre and Ras Shamra.  To the Greeks the term Phoenician, from the root Phoenix, had connotations of red, and it is likely that the name was derived from the physical appearance of the people themselves.

The Phoenicians were a coastal branch of the Canaanites, who, according to Biblical traditions, were the brothers of Kush (Ethiopia) and Mizraim (Kmt)--members of the Hamite ethnic group.  In other words, the Bible states that the ancient Canaanites, Ethiopians and Egyptians were all African nations. Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop claimed that "Phoenician history is therefore incomprehensible only if we ignore the Biblical data, according to which the Phoenicians, in other words, the Canaanites, were originally Negroes, already civilized, with whom nomadic, uncultured white tribes later mixed."   While acknowledging the Biblical data, Diop cautioned that the economic relations shared by the Kamites and Phoenicians should not be minimized in explaining the strong sense of solidarity which generally existed between them.  There was frequently a Kamite presence: military, diplomatic, religious or commercial, both in the Canaanite hinterland and the Phoenician city-states themselves, and Diop goes on to state that, "Even throughout the most troubled periods of great misfortune, Egypt could count on the Phoenicians as one can count more or less on a brother."

The Phoenicians were the great seafarers of their time and dominated the Mediterranean shipping lanes.  Phoenician inscriptions have been found as far north as central Turkey and as far west as Tunisia where the famous ancient city of Carthage was founded.   It was among the Canaanites that one of the most important and meaningful inventions in human history is attested--the alphabet.

AfricanLion777

[African_Disciple]

Greetings. Maybe you already know this site, but the page has a big list of Black inventors names we can research.

http://www.swagga.com/inventors.htm