Garrett Morgan patented a traffic signal that added the yellow caution light to existing red and green traffic lights.Schwartz or in Whoosh! : Lonnie Johnson's Super-Soaking Stream of Inventions by Chris Barton if you want the picture-book version! Lonnie Johnson is a NASA engineer who developed the Super Soaker water gun. Read his story in Super Soaker Inventor Lonnie Johnsonby Heather E.Read their stories in Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly, Hidden Women by Rebecca Rissman, and Reaching for the Moon by Katherine Johnson. Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson and Katherine Johnson were female mathematicians known as “human computers.” At the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory in Hampton, Virginia, they calculated the numbers that would launch rockets - and their astronaut passengers - into space.Read more about them in their biographies in our catalog and in compilations including Changing the Equation: 50+ US Black Women in STEM by Tonya Bolden and A Child's Introduction to African American History by Jabari Asim.

Here are just a few examples of Black inventors and their solutions.

Makers identify a problem and invent the solution. President Gerald Ford officially recognized Black History Month in 1976, and February has been designated as Black History Month by every American president since. Learn more of the story of Black History Month and about other celebrations in and of African American culture in African-American Holidays, Festivals, and Celebrations by Kathlyn Gay. Yearly proclamations recognizing Negro History Week were soon issued across the country, and by the late 1960s Negro History Week had become Black History Month on many college campuses. When the group sponsored the first national Negro History Week in 1926, it chose the second week of February to coincide with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. Moorland founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH) - now the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) - to celebrate the achievements of Black Americans and individuals of African descent. Celebrate stories of invention and leaders in technology that will motivate you to get making this February.