(Erica Taylor, The Tom Joyner Morning Show) American Creole inventor Norbert Rillieux was known for his invention of the multiple-effect evaporator that became an instrumental tool in the sugar industry. He was born to a prominent mixed family, a white plantation owner and engineer and a freed black mother whose sister was the richest black woman in town. It was his family’s connections that got him into a school in Paris, France, where he would become an expert blacksmith and later take a job as the youngest teacher on the campus.
Before Rillieux’s energy-efficient idea to fix the way sugar was made with his invention, slaves would use the Jamaica Trade system of transferring sugar cane into an extremely thick, hot liquid sugar product. Many would suffer severe burns during the transfers, and it would take hours to complete.
When Rillieux began his research to fix the sugar system in France, he tried to go into business with his family, which was disastrous and resulted in an abandoned sugar refinery. The men would even lose contact for years over their business disagreements.
Still, Rillieux continued with his research, and by 1843, he had developed and patented a way for the sugar to be transferred and cooled in larger quantities and in a safer way for the slaves to make it. Only six years later, he had 13 different sugar factories using his evaporator system, now making it possible to produce thousands of pounds of sugar per day.
Rillieux not only changed the way that sugar was made, but he also invented a plan to stop the still water in the New Orleans swamps, where mosquitoes bred during a big yellow fever epidemic of the 1850s. Unfortunately, a politician blocked his efforts, and white engineers sold a similar plan a few years later.
