I'm just back from a holiday to find that I'm attending tonight a function here at the British Library . It's called Winners 2: the Rise and Rise of Black British Entrepreneurs. It's part of our continuing support for business.
Most of the information on the Web or in books on black inventors is American in origin. This site is a good starting point. In the UK there is certainly plenty of activity from Asian or Afro-Carribean inventors. I have given talks at inventors' clubs and (like my colleagues Peter and Maria) regularly give free workshops here on patent searching, and the evidence is there, admittedly from a London audience.
If anyone is interested in recording patented inventions by Afro-Carribean inventors the patents would not help, as they record addresses and names only. In 1900 Henry Baker, an examiner at the US Patent and Trademark Office, carried out a survey asking for infomation on relevant patents. I have heard that he also marked in-coming patent applications with his own code for later analysis (but how did he know ?).
It's a fascinating area in which to research the history of technology. Rather easier is identifying early patent applications by Japanese citizens in the USA, which can -- with a lot of effort -- be identified on the Google patent web site. Try "emperor" and "Japan" for example.
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