Biography: John Standard
There are a huge number of personalities who contributed a lot to humanity through their achievements. Unfortunately, many of them lost their names in the course of history. Some became prey to time, while others to prejudice. History is proof to the racial oppression meted to African Americans and so many prominent and key individuals lost their identity to racial bias and inadequate records. One such personality is the African-American inventor John Standard. He is known to have patented an improvement in the design of refrigerator and a gas stove design. This article is a biographical collection of all that is known about an African American inventor who pioneered and invented at a time when people of his ethnicity were oppressed and subjected to slavery.
Very little is known about John Standard and his early life. It is known that he was born to Mary and Joseph Standard on June 15, 1868, though the date is highly ambiguous and there is very less proof of his date of birth to be correct. What is confirmed though is that he hailed from Newark, New Jersey. Whether he received formal schooling is unknown. John Standard lived in a time when racial discrimination was notorious in the American society and African Americans were looked down by the American Whites. John Standards obscurity comes as a direct example of the racial mind set of the people. Surprisingly, even with the existence of huge number of information websites on the World Wide Web, there is not one reliable source that can provide any substantially complete information about John Standard.
What little is known about his life is that John Standard was a very helpful man and a hard worker. His message to the world was to never give and try ones best to succeed in life (Stsylvestercomputer). What is documented about him is that he patented an improvement in the design of refrigerator on June 14 1891 (U.S. patent #455,891) (Bellis). Contrary to a widespread belief, John Standard did not invent the refrigerator; he applied an improvement to its design. Another of John Standard’s inventions was a portable form of stove that he patented on October 29, 2013 under the U.S. patent number 413,689 (Bellis).
In his patent for a non-electrical refrigerator design improvement, John Standard declared, "this invention relates to improvements in refrigerators; and it consists of certain novel arrangements and combinations of parts."(Bellis) What John Standard meant was that he had innovated a way to improve the overall design of refrigerators. A non-electrical and unpowered design, Standard's refrigerator made in 1891 used a manually-filled ice chamber for chilling. This ice chamber was placed at the top of the refrigerator unit, where the cold air would flow down to cool the contents of the refrigerator. This improvement was such an important modification to the design of the refrigerator that it is used in most of the modern and more sophisticated refrigerator design today, where the cooling begins at the chilling chamber. Apart from placing an ice chamber at the top, John modified the design to make it more vertical and added a door to help trap the cold air that would flow from the top of the refrigeration unit.
John Standard's oil stove was a design that was very compact and had more efficiency than its larger counter parts. This space-saving design was a versatile innovation and John himself gave the suggestion of using this stove heater to heat food in buffet style meals served on trains in those years.
John Standard lived a life of obscurity, owing to the oppressive time he lived in. It is speculated that John Standard worked as a help for American White women and aided in sewing chores. Records were not made for African Americans and there is wide speculation of John’s birth and death records. In fact there is no substantial record of John Standard’s death or his family life. It comes as a surprise that such a person who contributed such key inventions to the everyday innovation was lost to obscurity owing to a misplaced sense of racial bias. A search in the death records directory gives no result of the information of birth and death of a person named John Standard. All information that is available is through word of mouth, which is highly unreliable.
It comes as a shame as to how prominent people could be ignored and down sized because they did not belong to the appropriate color. John Standard, the African American inventor must have been a very hard working and intelligent man. To know that an African American could patent his inventions at a time when African Americans were oppressed and looked down upon, is a proof as to how influential John Standard would have been in his life. He must surely have earned a lot of good will in his life, because of which his name survived, though the same cannot be said about the records of his life or his family history.
Researching this article brings to light as to how wrong notions like racial superiority can lead to loss of such crucial information related to people who made a difference to the world. Never the less, the name John Standard is a beacon for all those oppressed and down trodden that excellence does not depend on ones’ color or roots, it depends upon their hard work and guts to make a stand in life (Museum of African American History).
Works cited
Stsylvestercomputer. John Standard. YouTube video. 26 Feb. 2010. Accessed 20 Oct. 2013. Online.
Bellis, M. John Standard. About.com Inventors. N.D. Accessed 20 Oct. 2013. Online.
Museum of African American History. Afroammuseum.org. N.D. Accessed 20 Oct. 2013. Online.
