This is an opinion column.

A chair was just a chair — until Miriam Elizabeth Benjamin put a light and a bell on one.

Benjamin was a schoolteacher, composer and inventor, born in 1861 in Charleston, South Carolina. Born free.

She was always a curious reader, and she imparted that curiosity into her students at Washington, D.C.’s segregated schools.

She was curious enough about medicine to attend medical school at Howard University.

She was curious enough about the law to enroll in — and graduate from — law school, also at Howard.

She was curious enough about the future to begin pondering ways to tweak the world around her, tweak and improve it.

After law school, Benjamin opened an office as a “solicitor of patents.” As a patent lawyer.

Who did that then? Only curious people. Curious people who really want to tweak the world around them, tweak and improve it.

Benjamin didn’t just see a chair. She saw hotel restaurants struggling to hire enough waiters to serve customers. Struggling to respond to a raised hand, to a call for service.

She saw customers sitting in chairs, to which she added a ringer and a light, triggered by a button.

Benjamin didn’t just see a chair. She saw hotel restaurants struggling to hire enough waiters to serve customers. Struggling to efficiently respond to raised hands, to calls for service.

So she added to the chair a ringer and a light, which were triggered by a button.

On July 17, 1888, Benjamin obtained U.S. patent 386 289 for her invention, the Gong and Signal Chair for Hotels. In her application, she wrote: The invention would “reduce the expenses of hotels by decreasing the number of waiters and attendants, to add to the convenience and comfort of guests and to obviate the necessity of hand clapping or calling aloud to obtain the services of pages.”

Inventions don’t always hit their intended mark. Sometimes, they’re just a bit ahead of their time.

Benjamin’s chair didn’t revolutionize the hotel industry, but it was a seed that flourished in other spaces. How do members of Congress make it known that they wish to speak? The U.S. House of Representatives later incorporated Benjamin’s system in their chamber to alert the speaker when a member wants to address the body.

How do passengers on a plane get the attention of a flight attendant? With technology derived from Benjamin’s button and chair.

Benjamin was among the first Black women to receive a U.S. patent. Twenty years earlier, on May 5, 1868, Martha Jones of Amelia County, Virginia, was said to be the first Black woman to receive a patent — no. 77 494 was granted for inventing a machine that husks and shells corn all in one swoop.

On September 23, 1884, Judy W. Reed received patent 305 474 for her “dough kneader and roller.” And on 14 July 1885, Sarah E. Goode received patent 322 177 for a piece of furniture that could hide a folded mattress — yes, the sleep sofa’s ancestor. You know it as a Murphy bed; it should be a Goode bed!

In 1988, Ellen Eglin invented a clothes wringer, which would revolutionize the process of drying clothes. Alas, believing white women would not use a device invented by a Black woman, she sold the rights to the design for $18 and did not receive a penny in future profits generated by the American Wringer Company. (Check out its racist advertisement.)

Later, on April 26, 1892, seamstress and inventor Sarah Boone obtained patent 473653A for her improvements to the ironing board.

All of these Black women, and many more, changed our lives with inventions we now take for granted as everyday conveniences — yet their contributions aren’t likely being taught to our children. And withDonald Trump seeking to purge Black history from curricula and museums, a generation may not know their names.

We’ll all be the worse for it. Our children will be the worst for it.

If you didn’t know, now you know. Pass the word.

Let’s be better tomorrow than we are today. My column appears on AL.com, and digital editions of The Birmingham News, Huntsville Times, and Mobile Press-Register. Tell me what you think at [email protected], and follow me at twitter.com/roysj, Instagram @roysj and BlueSky.