Electric turn signal lights were devised as early as 1907 (U.S. Patent 912,831), but were not widely offered by major automobile manufacturers until the late 1930s, when GM developed its own version and made it standard on Buicks. The Pierce Arrow Museum in Buffalo, NY denies that directional signals were offered on 1913 Pierce Arrows.

Henry Mill, an English engineer, was the first person to patent the basic idea of the typewriter in 1714. The first working typewriter known to have actually been built was the work of Pellegrino Turri of Italy in 1808. The familiar QWERTY keyboard, developed by C. L. Sholes and C. Glidden, reached the market in 1874. In 1878 change-case keys were added that enabled the typing of both capital and small letters.

A few thoughts.....

Every year during Black History Month, we get to hear about all of the colored geniuses in our midst. We all get this crap shoved in our faces in school, on T.V., etc.....We hear that if it weren't for black people inventing traffic lights, we'd all be crashing at intersections. We have to keep a straight face while they tell us that if blacks hadn't invented elevators, we'd still be stuck on the first floor. As if white people, intelligent enough to create, design and develop automobiles, paved roads, and an Interstate highway system couldn't figure out how to avoid running into each other at intersections. Or that anyone smart enough to build skyscrapers could never figure out how to get to the top floor without brilliant negroes inventing elevators. Even if blacks had actually contributed to society (imagine that) by inventing things, something tells me Western Civilization could have managed without them, somehow. Unfortunately for the delicate feelings of our overly-sensitive colored friends, most of what is taught as fact in our schools and museums about their great achievements are absolutely false. Pure fiction. White people are too afraid of being branded a racist to actually call bullshit on these preposterous tales of black ingenuity, so we just figure it helps the poor things feel good about themselves to imagine that they can actually pull their weight in an advanced technological society. Modern blacks think that it's lame to do well in school, and they'd rather collect welfare and demand an easy life from white taxpayers. Back in the 1920's, for example, blacks, for the most part, knew they had better do their best to keep up with us, and they taught their kids that they would have to work twice as hard as white folks to get half as far. Given their obvious intellectual shortcomings, this was a fairly accurate outlook. Also, most of the "blacks" glorified for past achievements are at least half white, judging by the looks of them. Some even passed for white in our society. So with white genes and the advantage of being raised in a white-dominated culture, it's expected that a certain number of them would attempt to tinker around with our technology and try their hand at inventing things. While they should be given credit for doing their best, and even obtaining patents in some cases, the vast majority of the technical contributions that they made were either not very helpful or were near-replicas of things that had been patented decades earlier by white folks. If blacks were the geniuses that they would have us believe, where are the African scientists, inventors and innovators? Where is the African space program? If blacks were so intelligent, and the only reason they don't do well in American society is because we oppress them and deny them opportunities, you would think that in their native lands they would be free to express their intellectual prowess without being bothered by mean white people. Yet we see that, even as little as blacks have contributed to society, they have only done that much in our country, where they have all of the cultural and educational advantages that we can share with them. Google this stuff up yourself, and you will find that websites, museums and probably your child's public schools repeat this crap. I was reading one Afro-centric website that actually claimed that many black inventors are unknown because they were slaves at the time and not given credit for their technological prowess. Of course, if slave owners were taking credit for their slaves' inventions, how would black people today know it happened? Also, even if slaves and newly-freed blacks really created all of this stuff, that kind of screws up all of the excuses blacks make these days for their present-day ignorance, illiteracy and general lack of ability to make it in a modern white civilization, doesn't it? I mean, how can you tell me that Latrelle or Shaniqua can't pass their SAT's because of a history of racism and oppression and then turn around and say that blacks were actually smarter and more creative when we owned them? I'm so tired of hearing them blame slavery for everything. Look, we brought you people here and made you do chores. Long time ago. Get over it. And stop taking credit for inventing things you probably can't even spell, it just makes you look silly. Have you ever noticed the dates on the vast majority of these so-called black inventions? Late 1800's and early 1900's for the most part. Isn't that when schools all over America were segregated, as well as neighborhoods and almost every other public place? Isn't that when blacks were regularly lynched for the crimes they committed? Modern blacks are always moaning about the Jim Crow days and how we oppressed and excluded them, yet, on the other hand, they apparently want to claim that there was some huge surge in black geniuses running around inventing things. How could that be? Seems like these blacks want to have it both ways, because they don't really understand how things work. And if all of these alleged black inventors could achieve these great things in the face of segregation laws and oppression, why couldn't all of the other blacks do the same back then? No, they screamed and rioted and claimed segregation was keeping them down, so we opened our entire society up to them thinking they would shut up for a while and leave us alone, but nope, somehow we are still keeping them down. As negligible and trivial as the accomplishments of these black "inventors" were, at least they were trying. They understood that to get ahead, you had to ape the white race as best you could. That was back when we actually ran things. Now you have niggers running around trying to control their schools and neighborhoods and consequently they are at their highest levels of illiteracy, illegitimacy and criminality since we found them eating their grandmothers in Africa centuries ago. As hard as it may be for American blacks to admit this, they only achieve their highest potential in orderly, civilized societies where they are not permitted to have any power or control whatsoever. In other words, strong white societies. They have shown that their "talented tenth," as W.E.B. DuBois called them, can only thrive in conditions and environments that they could never create or maintain themselves.

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