African American Invention and Robert C. Dickenson’s Streetcar Trolley Guard Blueprint, 1919

Streetcar

Ephemera and pamphlets

Dickenson, Robert C. streetcar trolley guard blueprint, 1919, documents African American participation in early twentieth-century mechanical invention through a patented safety device for electric streetcar operation. Dickenson’s U.S. Patent No. 1,314,130 was awarded on August 26, 1919, for a trolley guard, placing the drawing within patent systems that governed transportation technology, mechanical authorship, and commercial claims to invention. The material documents patent-based engineering through a full-scale technical blueprint, revealing how an African American inventor translated an urban transit problem into labeled mechanical components, and providing primary-source evidence for the study of Black inventors, street railway technology, and industrial design in the World War I era.

Streetcar trolley guard blueprint. Robert C. Dickenson. Ohio, 1919. 28 x 16 inches. The blueprint presents a detailed technical drawing of Dickenson’s streetcar trolley guard, with precise white drafting lines against a deep blue ground, labeled parts, and annotations identifying material requirements and finishing instructions. Visible components include steel roller shaft, copper trolley, steel trolley holder, fork and bar pin, aluminum bracket, spring, and bolt, corresponding to the patent’s description of rotatable rollers mounted on opposite sides of a trolley wheel to engage the wheel flanges. The lower section includes an instruction concerning the spring and bolt, showing the drawing’s practical function as a working technical document rather than a commemorative or promotional image.

Dickenson’s subsequent co-founding of The Dickenson Trolley Guard Manufacturing Company in 1920, reportedly capitalized at $10,000, indicates an effort to move the patented device from invention to manufacture, although available description does not confirm production. Provenance from the estate of his brother, jazz trombonist Vic Dickenson, adds a family association linking the object to a notable African American cultural figure while leaving the blueprint’s central importance in the history of Black technical invention. Minor edge wear and small central stain; drafting lines and annotations remain clear; very good. A visually precise and researchable artifact of African American patent activity in urban transportation technology.

Item #21601

Price: $450.00