Granville Woods: Beating Edison in Court Twice and the Fail-Safe Third Rail

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Granville Woods was born in Columbus, Ohio, in 1856 to Cyrus and Martha Woods, and poverty ended his schooling by age 10. He learned machinery from the inside: a machine shop apprenticeship, work as a fireman on the Danville and Southern Railroad in Missouri in 1872, a rolling mill in Springfield, Illinois, and a post as chief engineer on the British steamship Ironsides. In 1880 he set up as an electrical engineer in Cincinnati, later incorporating the Woods Electric Company. His first patent, in 1884, was a steam boiler furnace, and in 1885 he sold his telegraphony device, which sent voice and Morse code over one wire, to the American Bell Telephone Company.

His synchronous multiplex railway telegraph used magnetic induction so moving trains could communicate with stations. Smallpox delayed his filing, but he proved priority over Lucius Phelps, then beat Thomas Edison's claims in court twice and turned down a job with Edison. After the Great Blizzard of 1888 forced New York's wires underground, he designed a third rail that went live only under a passing car, tested in February 1892 on a Coney Island figure-eight roller coaster. He died penniless in Harlem Hospital on January 30, 1910, at 53.

• James S. Zerbe of the American Engineering Company patented Woods's rail design in Europe, a patent valued at $1 million.
• Woods was arrested for libel after advertising that the company were thieves, and a jury acquitted him.
• He sometimes told white businessmen he was an immigrant from Australia.
• His 1896 theater dimmer saved an estimated 40 percent on electricity, and he sold his third rail to General Electric in 1901.
• Buried in an unmarked grave in St. Michael's Cemetery in Queens, he got a headstone in 1975 through historian M.A. Harris.