The professional networks through which inventions were commercialized were segregated.

The capital markets were segregated.

The legal system that enforced patent rights was administered by white judges and operated through white law firms.

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries produced Black inventors of remarkable achievement — Granville T.

Woods, Lewis Howard Latimer, Jan Ernst Matzeliger, Elijah McCoy — whose names are now somewhat better known than they were a generation ago but who still remain far less recognized than their achievements deserve.

Each of them navigated the gap between patent and product in a world where race was an active barrier to commercialization.