Featured Inventor

Ellen Elgin: The Clothes Wringer

Very little is known about Ellen Elgin’s background. According to Patricia Sluby in The Inventive Spirit of African Americans: Patented Ingenuity, Elgin was a government clerk. She created the design of the clothes wringer, but sold it to an agent for $18.00. Other sources have described the agent as a white salesman.

The clothes wringer sold well and it is reported that when Elgin was asked why she sold her idea so cheaply, she responded:

"You know I am black and if it was known that a [N]egro woman patented the invention, white ladies would not buy the wringer; I was afraid to be known because of my color in having it introduced in the market, that is my only reason." *

*Sluby, Patricia Carter. The Inventive Spirit of African Americans: Patented Ingenuity (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, 2004), p. 128.

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