Sarah E. Goode: Difference between revisions

Most customers of Goode's furniture store were working-class people who lived in small apartments that couldn’t fit a lot of furniture, including beds.<ref>{{Cite web |last= |first= |title=Sarah E. Goode |url=https://www.biography.com/inventor/sarah-e-goode |access-date=2022-12-07 |website=Biography |date= 23 February 2021|language=en-us}}</ref> As well as this, at the time of her invention, New York City passed a law that restricted buildings to be under {{convert|80|feet}}. [[Tenement]] buildings were also restricted to footprints of {{convert|25|by|100|ft}}.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Tenements |url=https://www.history.com/topics/immigration/tenements |access-date=2022-12-07 |website=HISTORY |date=10 October 2019 |language=en}}</ref> As Goode heard this problem from her customers in Chicago, she set out to help Chicago apartment dwellers with limited space in their apartments.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Boyd |first=Herb |date=2016-07-14 |title=Inventor Sarah E. Goode, the first Black woman awarded a patent |url=http://amsterdamnews.com/news/2016/07/14/inventor-sarah-e-goode-first-black-woman-awarded-p/ |access-date=2022-12-07 |website=New York Amsterdam News |language=en-US}}</ref> Goode invented a folding bed that would become the precursor to the [[Murphy bed|Murphy Bed]] - a hide-away bed. It was a cabinet bed which folded into a roll-top desk which had compartments for writing supplies and stationery.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2010-11-05 |title=Sarah E. Goode (c.1855?-1905) • |url=https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/goode-sarah-e-c-1855-1905/ |access-date=2022-12-07 |language=en-US}}</ref> Her goal for was to balance the weight of the folding of the bed so it could be easily lifted up and held in its place and also provide supplementary support to the center of the bed when it was unfolded.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Otha Richard Sullivan |url=http://archive.org/details/africanamericanw00sull |title=African American women scientists and inventors |date=2002 |publisher=Wiley |others=Internet Archive |isbn=978-0-471-38707-7}}</ref> In 1885, for her invention of the folding bed, Goode was one of the first African American women to receive a US patent.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2016-01-06 |title=Sarah E. Goode |url=https://www.clarabartonmuseum.org/sarahegoode/ |access-date=2022-12-07 |website=Clara Barton Museum}}</ref> The patented folding bed would inspire the modern-day Murphy bed.<ref>{{Cite web |last= |first= |title=Sarah E. Goode |url=https://www.biography.com/inventor/sarah-e-goode |access-date=2022-12-07 |website=Biography |date= 23 February 2021|language=en-us}}</ref>