Garrett Morgan

Twice, he stopped the world from killing itself.

 In 1914 his safety hood pulled men alive from a gas-filled tunnel. In 1923 he patented the three-position traffic signal — adding the warning that saved countless lives at every intersection. A newspaperman's son who never finished grade school, engineering safety into daily life.

U.S. Patent No. 1,475,024 · November 20, 1923.