THE GULF WAR: The Home Front : History: Gas Masks

The gas masks now being used in the Persian Gulf to guard against chemical warfare trace their origins to a “BREATHING DEVICE” PATENTED IN 1914 by a self-educated businessman who also invented the three-light traffic signal. Garrett A. Morgan, who lived in Cleveland, applied for a patent on Aug. 19, 1912. He received patent No. 1,113,675 two years later, just five months after the outbreak of World War I and 2 1/2 years before the United States entered the conflict. By that time, Germany and Britain were already mass-producing gas masks, but the patent is proof in America’s view that he invented it, said Tom Hollingsworth of the National Invention Center in Akron.