Look for information about African-American inventors and you'll quickly find that American innovation is rich with the contributions of famous black inventors.

Many modern conveniences and necessities are directly related to, or derivative of, the inventions of black inventors: blood banks, the refrigerator, the electric trolley, the dust pan, comb, mop, brush, clothes dryer, refrigerator, lawn mower, traffic signals, the pen and the pencil sharpener.

But what of the present-day counterparts to these historical figures? Did African-Americans just up and stop inventing?

The answer, conclusively, is no.

From colonial times through today, Americans of African and Caribbean descent have contributed to the advancement of medicine, physics, industrialization and plain old fun.