The 25 Greatest Gadgets Created By Black Inventors

13. Jenny Coupler

Inventor: Andrew Jackson Beard
Year: 1897
Born a slave on an Alabama plantation in 1849, Andrew Jackson Beard later became the inventor of several inventions, most notably the Jenny Coupler. This device hooked train cars together, which at one point were manually joined at dangerous costs—hence, the ex-railroad worker’s loss of his leg performing the task. For his invention, Beard was inducted in the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Akron, Ohio, and managed to keep railroad workers safe thus forward.