His device was also used to retrieve the bodies of those who didn’t survive. Others joined in after his team succeeded, rescuing several more. The rescuers were initially skeptical of his device, so he and his brother went into the tunnel along with two other volunteers. Morgan arrived on the scene still wearing his pajamas, bringing his brother Frank and four of the hoods. After two failed rescue attempts, one of the workmen who’d seen a demonstration of Morgan’s smoke hood ran to his house, woke him up in the middle of the night, and begged him to bring as many smoke hoods as he could. On July 24, 1916, there was an explosion in a tunnel beneath Lake Erie, trapping many workers. Two years later, it was Garrett Morgan himself who helped demonstrate its promise - at great risk to his own life. He founded the National Safety Device Company in 1914 to market the gear. Soon Morgan's inventive mind took him in an entirely different direction: a smoke hood for firefighters that used both a moist sponge and intricate tubing to allow them to breathe while fighting flames or rescuing people. Experimenting with chemicals and dyes, he invented and then sold a line of hair-care products.

With his new wife Mary Anne, Garrett Morgan opened first a sewing machine shop and then a clothing manufacturer.

A gifted tinkerer, he began designing implements for the machines, including a belt fastener and a device for sewing in a zigzag pattern. Forced to leave school after the sixth grade to find work in Cincinnati, Morgan continued his studies - paying a tutor with his own meager wages - while working as a repairman for sewing machines. He was of African, European, and American Indian descent, his parents having been formerly enslaved in Kentucky. On this date in 1877, Garrett Augustus Morgan was born in Paris, Kentucky.

Audacious in a sentence