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Sunday, February 24, 2008 | 7:28pm
Black History Fact
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Richard Spikes (1884-1962) was an African-American engineer from San Francisco, California. He designed a system of automobile directional signals, which he installed on a Pierce-Arrow car in 1913. In 1932 he received a patent for an automatic gear shift device.
Richard Spikes patented or developed the following inventions:
- railroad semaphore (1906)
- automatic car washer (1913)
- automobile directional signals (1913) – manufactured by Pierce Arrow
- beer keg tap (1910) – purchased by Milwaukee Brewing Company.
- self-locking rack for billiard cues (1910)
- continuous contact trolley pole (1919) – used on on the famous San Francisco Key Line.
- combination milk bottle opener and cover (1926)
- method and apparatus for obtaining average samples and temperature of tank liquids (1931)
- improved automatic gear shift (1932) – licensed the patent for $100,000
- transmission and shifting thereof (1933)
- automatic shoe shine chair (1939)
- multiple barrel machine gun (1940)
- horizontally swinging barber chair (1950)
- automatic safety brake (1962) – year Richard Spikes died.
wikipedia
FILED IN Cars, Need to Know, Technology
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