30 School Street, Boston

Welcome to the official Innovation Trail audio guide. If you're starting in Boston, this is the first segment to listen to. In this segment, you'll meet your guide and narrator, Carmichael Roberts. He'll tell the story of Lewis Latimer, a Black draftsman and inventor who spent part of the 1860s and 1870s working at a patent law firm located on the upper floors of the Boston Five Cent Savings Bank building, right in front of you. Latimer was born in Chelsea, and he came from a famous family of escaped enslaved people who fled the South. He worked with Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, and other leading inventors of the day to perfect some of the most important inventions of the Second Industrial Revolution. 

If you are starting the tour at this stop, please refer to our website for Google Maps that can help guide you from place to place. 

Guest speaker

Ron Robinson, co-director of the Lewis Latimer Society