Richard Spikes
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Richard Spikes (1884-1962) was an African-American engineer from San Francisco, California. He designed a system of automobile directional signals, which he installed on a Pierce-Arrow car in 1913. In 1932 he received a patent for an automatic gear shift device.
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[edit] Inventions
Richard Spikes patented or developed the following inventions:
- Railroad semaphore (1906)
- Automatic car washer (1913)
- Automobile directional signals (1913) - manufactured by Pierce Arrow
- Beer keg tap (1910) - purchased by Milwaukee Brewing Company.
- Self-locking rack for billiard cues (1910)
- Continuous contact trolley pole (1919) - used on on the famous San Francisco Key Line.
- Combination milk bottle opener and cover (1926)
- Method and apparatus for obtaining average samples and temperature of tank liquids (1931)
- Improved automatic gear shift (1932) - licensed the patent for $100,000
- Transmission and shifting thereof (1933)
- Automatic shoe shine chair (1939)
- Multiple barrel machine gun (1940)
- Horizontally swinging barber chair (1950)
- Automatic safety brake (1962)
[edit] Trivia
His most famous invention was the beer keg tap (1910)
Note: While Richard Spikes was working on his automatic safety brake in 1962, he lost his vision. As a result, Richard Spikes designed a drafting machine for blind people, in order to assist him in his inventing.
Richard Spikes - Automatic gear shift U.S. Patent 1,889,814 issued 12/6/1932
Richard Spikes patented an improved automatic gear shift in 1932. His object was to develop a gear shift where the gears for the various speeds were in constant mesh. Richard Spikes invented a novel clutch mechanism for his gear shift, he used levers to shift gears.
