Posts Tagged: "Granville Woods"

Granville Woods is often referred as “The Black Edison.” Woods and Thomas Edison went to court twice over what were apparently invention disputes. Both times, Woods won. There’s even a story, perhaps “folklore,” that Edison asked Woods to work for him, but Woods turned down Edison’s offer. Admittedly, Edison, with close to 1100 patents to his name, is far better known than Woods. But the parallels between these two inventive giants are striking in many respects. Both were from Ohio. Each came from very humble or modest family backgrounds. Each was primarily self-taught and highly entrepreneurial. Their scientific intellect was keen and often focused on electrical technologies. The scope of their inventive discoveries was also quite varied, and extremely prolific.