Elevators transformed American cities, allowing buildings to rise higher and making upper floors more accessible. But early elevator travel carried a serious danger: doors had to be opened and closed manually, and an elevator shaft could remain exposed if someone failed to secure it properly.

Alexander Miles, a Black inventor, barber and businessman, developed an innovative solution. His patented mechanism helped elevators operate their car and shaft doors automatically, making elevator travel safer and more convenient.

The danger of early elevators

By the late 19th century, elevators were appearing in hotels, offices and other multistory buildings. Although they made vertical travel easier, many depended on operators or passengers to close the doors manually.

A carelessly opened shaft door could expose an empty elevator shaft. Miles recognized that elevator safety could not always depend on someone remembering to close every door.

He designed a system that connected the movement of the elevator car with the operation of its doors.

Alexander Miles’ elevator innovation

On October 11, 1887, Miles received U.S. Patent No. 371,207 for what he described as “new and useful improvements in elevators.”

His design addressed two related problems. It provided a way to close shaft openings above and below the elevator car, and it allowed the movement of the car to help open and close the elevator doors at the appropriate floor.

Miles’s mechanism used a flexible belt attached to the elevator car, along with drums positioned at the top and bottom of the shaft. A system of levers, rollers and specially designed grooves helped control the car and shaft doors as the elevator moved.

The goal was straightforward but potentially lifesaving: prevent elevator-shaft openings from being left unprotected because of human negligence.

Did Alexander Miles invent the elevator door?

Alexander Miles is sometimes described as the inventor of the automatic elevator door. The complete history is more complicated.

John W. Meaker received a patent for an earlier automatic elevator-door mechanism in 1874, approximately 13 years before Miles received his patent. Therefore, Miles should not be credited with inventing the first automatic elevator door.

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What Miles did was develop and patent his own important improvement to the way elevator car and shaft doors operated. His design advanced the effort to make elevators safer, more reliable and easier to use.

Recognizing that distinction does not diminish his accomplishment. Invention is often a continuing process in which engineers and innovators improve existing technology. Miles contributed a valuable new solution to a dangerous problem.

More than an inventor

Born in 1838, Alexander Miles built a successful life during an era when Black Americans faced severe restrictions on economic opportunity.

Miles worked as a barber before establishing himself in Duluth, Minnesota. He operated a barbershop in the city’s St. Louis Hotel and invested in real estate. He also became the first Black member of the Duluth Chamber of Commerce.

His achievements extended beyond mechanical invention. In Chicago, Miles later established the United Brotherhood, an organization intended to provide life insurance to Black Americans who were frequently denied coverage by established insurance companies.

That part of his story demonstrates the larger scope of his work. Miles was not only interested in solving mechanical problems. He also attempted to create economic security and opportunity for members of his community.

A lasting contribution to elevator safety

Modern elevators use far more sophisticated electrical controls, sensors and computerized safety systems than those available during Miles’s lifetime. His exact mechanism is not the system operating inside every elevator today.

However, the safety principle behind his work remains essential: an elevator should coordinate the movement of the car with the opening and closing of its doors, while preventing passengers from entering an unprotected shaft.

In recognition of his contribution, Alexander Miles was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2007.

Remembering Alexander Miles accurately

Alexander Miles did not invent the elevator, and he was not the first person to patent an automatic elevator-door system. He was a creative Black inventor who recognized a serious safety hazard and developed a patented method for addressing it.

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Everyday technologies are rarely the work of only one person. They develop through generations of experimentation, refinement and improvement. Miles deserves recognition as one of the innovators who helped move elevator technology toward the safer automatic operation passengers now expect.

His work is another reminder that Black inventors helped build and improve many of the technologies that shaped modern American life.

Forgotten Genius Friday celebrates the Black inventors, scientists and innovators whose ideas helped shape the world—even when their names were left out of the history books.

Sources

• Alexander Miles — U.S. Patent No. 371,207
• Alexander Miles — National Inventors Hall of Fame
• Alexander Miles Patent — IEEE REACH
• Alexander Miles — Lemelson-MIT Program
• Alexander Miles — Duluth Public Library’s Vintage Duluth

Historical context

• John W. Meaker’s 1874 self-closing elevator-shaft patent

You’ve probably seen them hundreds of times.

They sit outside supermarkets, convenience stores and shopping centers—or sometimes stand alone in small roadside kiosks. You bring an empty bottle, usually one, three or five gallons, put in some money, push a button and watch purified water pour into your container.

For many people in California, Arizona and other parts of the American West, water vending machines seem like they’ve simply always been there.

But when did we actually start buying water this way?

The answer takes us back more than a century, although the machines we recognize today didn’t really arrive until the 1970s.

The Water Vending Machine’s Surprising Ancestor

The story begins in Boston in 1908 with a man named Lawrence Luellen.

Luellen was working on something that sounds surprisingly modern: a machine that would allow someone to pay a penny and receive a clean drink of water in an individual disposable cup.

At the time, public drinking water was often consumed from a communal cup or metal dipper—a practice that increasingly worried public-health officials because of the potential spread of disease.

Luellen developed a paper drinking cup along with what became known as the Luellen Cup & Water Vendor. The porcelain machine contained water, ice, disposable cups and a place for discarded cups.

For one penny, a customer could get a drink of cold water in a fresh cup.

Historical records at Lafayette College’s Hugh Moore Dixie Cup Company Collection show that Luellen completed work on the vending apparatus in early 1908. His company, the American Water Supply Company of New England, was incorporated on April 4 of that year.

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There was just one problem.

The complete water machine was expensive to manufacture.

The company eventually concentrated on selling the disposable cups and cup dispensers instead. Those cups ultimately evolved into one of America’s most recognizable household products—the Dixie Cup.

So although Luellen’s machine wasn’t the five-gallon refill station we know today, the basic idea was already there:

Put money into a machine and receive drinking water.

The Modern Water Vending Machine Arrives

The next major chapter didn’t occur until roughly 65 years later.

According to histories of the water-vending industry, the first practical machines designed to sell purified water in bulk appeared during the mid-1970s.

These were fundamentally different from Luellen’s machine.

Instead of giving customers a cup of water, the new machines treated water—typically municipal tap water—and allowed customers to fill their own reusable containers.

And we have unusually strong evidence that these machines were operating by 1976.

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On July 26, 1976, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a memorandum specifically addressing the regulatory status of water vending machines.

The EPA described machines that filtered and disinfected water with ultraviolet light and then dispensed the treated water into a customer’s own container using a coin-operated mechanism.

In other words, by the summer of 1976, the basic water-refill machine many of us recognize today was already operating in the United States.

Why the 1970s?

The timing wasn’t accidental.

Americans had become increasingly concerned about pollution and drinking-water quality during the 1960s and 1970s.

Congress passed the Safe Drinking Water Act in 1974, establishing a federal framework for protecting public drinking-water supplies. National drinking-water regulations followed during the decade.

Meanwhile, technologies such as filtration, activated carbon treatment, ultraviolet disinfection and eventually reverse osmosis made it practical to build relatively compact systems capable of treating municipal water at the point where it was sold.

The result was a new business opportunity:

Instead of transporting thousands of bottles of water to a store, a vending company could connect a machine to the local water supply, purify that water on site and sell it by the gallon.

Customers supplied the bottle.

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California Helps Turn It Into a Business

California became one of the industry’s most important early markets.

One company that would eventually become a major player was founded by Robert G. Miller.

In 1983, Miller established Bottle Water Vending Inc., the predecessor of Glacier Water Services.

The company manufactured water vending machines and placed many of them outside supermarkets. Customers brought their own containers, while participating stores often sold reusable plastic jugs nearby.

The machines treated municipal water using combinations of filtration, reverse osmosis, carbon treatment and ultraviolet sterilization.

The idea caught on quickly.

In 1984, the company expanded from California into Arizona.

Nevada followed in 1986.

By 1987, the company reportedly had nearly 900 water vending machines operating.

Texas and Florida followed in 1988.

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The familiar supermarket water-refill station was becoming a significant business.

Then Came the Drive-Up Water Kiosk

Another variation appeared at almost exactly the same time.

In 1984, Lani and Don Dolifka developed what became Watermill Express in Colorado.

Their idea was an automated stand-alone purification kiosk capable of taking municipal water, processing it through multiple purification stages and selling the finished drinking water directly to customers.

Instead of walking into a supermarket, customers could pull up to the kiosk with their bottles.

Later Watermill Express systems were designed to accommodate reusable containers ranging from one to five gallons, using treatment processes including sediment filtration, activated carbon, reverse osmosis, ultraviolet disinfection and ozone treatment.

That basic concept remains familiar today.

Why Five-Gallon Bottles?

The five-gallon container was already well established through traditional bottled-water delivery services.

But refill vending changed the economics.

Instead of purchasing another filled bottle—or waiting for a delivery—a customer could keep the same container and refill it repeatedly.

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That eliminated much of the packaging and transportation involved with conventional bottled water.

It also made purified drinking water relatively inexpensive.

Bring the jug.

Buy the water.

Take the same jug home.

Bring it back when it’s empty.

More than four decades later, that’s still essentially how the system works.

So Who Invented the Modern Water Vending Machine?

That’s where the story gets complicated.

There doesn’t appear to be a single universally recognized inventor of the modern bulk purified-water vending machine.

Lawrence Luellen developed an important early coin-operated water vending concept in 1908, but his machine dispensed an individual drink and disposable cup—not gallons of purified water into a customer’s reusable bottle.

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The modern bulk-water machine emerged much later, apparently during the mid-1970s, as water-treatment technology and consumer concern about drinking-water quality converged.

By 1976, the EPA was already dealing with the regulatory implications of machines that treated municipal water and sold it through coin-operated dispensers into customers’ own containers.

Entrepreneurs and companies then refined and expanded the idea during the 1980s.

From a Penny Cup to Five Gallons at a Time

The evolution is remarkable.

1908: Put in a penny and receive a cup of cold water.

Mid-1970s: Machines begin treating municipal water and selling purified water in bulk.

1976: The EPA documents coin-operated machines dispensing treated water into customers’ containers.

1983: Bottle Water Vending, the predecessor of Glacier Water Services, begins operations in California.

1984: Glacier’s predecessor expands into Arizona, while Watermill Express develops its automated purification kiosk in Colorado.

Late 1980s and beyond: Water refill machines become increasingly familiar outside supermarkets and at stand-alone locations throughout the United States.

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Today, paying a few coins—or tapping a card—and filling a five-gallon jug might seem thoroughly ordinary.

But the machine sitting outside your neighborhood supermarket represents more than a century of evolution in how Americans buy something that once seemed almost unimaginable to sell from a vending machine:

a drink of water.

Sources and Further Reading

U.S. EPA — Status of Water Vending Machines Under Public Law 93-523

Lafayette College — Hugh Moore Dixie Cup Company Collection

U.S. EPA — Safe Water Research Milestones

Glacier Water Services Company History

World Vision — History of Watermill Express

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Last Updated on August 16, 2026 by Daily News Staff

Long before beauty brands became billion-dollar businesses and decades before women—especially Black women—had widespread access to business financing and professional opportunities, Madam C. J. Walker was building an empire of her own.

Born Sarah Breedlove in Louisiana in 1867, Walker rose from poverty and years of physically demanding work to become one of America’s most successful entrepreneurs.

Her achievement wasn’t simply about accumulating wealth.

Walker created products for an underserved community, developed an innovative nationwide sales network, trained thousands of women to become financially independent, and used her success to support civil rights and charitable causes.

Her journey remains one of the most remarkable stories in American business history.

From Sarah Breedlove to Madam C. J. Walker

Sarah Breedlove was born December 23, 1867, near Delta, Louisiana.

Her parents, Owen and Minerva Breedlove, had been enslaved, making Sarah the first of their children born into freedom following the Civil War.

Her childhood was difficult. Both of her parents died while she was young, leaving her orphaned at about seven years old.

She married at 14 and became a mother at 17. After the death of her first husband, she eventually moved with her daughter, Lelia—later known as A’Lelia Walker—to St. Louis.

There, Sarah worked as a washerwoman, reportedly earning little more than a dollar a day.

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But she was determined to give her daughter something she herself had been denied: an education.

A Personal Problem Becomes a Business Idea

Around the turn of the 20th century, Walker began experiencing severe scalp problems and hair loss.

These conditions were common among many women at the time. Limited access to indoor plumbing, harsh soaps, poor nutrition, and inadequate hair-care products could contribute to scalp disease and hair loss.

Walker began experimenting with treatments while also learning about the growing Black hair-care industry.

She briefly worked as a sales agent for Annie Turnbo Malone, another pioneering Black entrepreneur whose Poro hair-care company became enormously successful.

That experience helped Walker understand both hair care and the potential of direct-to-consumer sales.

After moving to Denver, Sarah began developing and selling her own products.

Following her marriage to newspaper advertising salesman Charles Joseph Walker, she began doing business under the name that would become famous:

Madam C. J. Walker.

The “Walker System”

Walker didn’t simply sell jars of hair products.

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She sold a complete hair-care method.

Known as the Walker System, it emphasized scalp cleanliness and healthy hair through regular washing, specialized products, heated combs, and careful grooming.

One of her best-known products was Madam Walker’s Wonderful Hair Grower, a scalp-conditioning treatment.

But perhaps Walker’s greatest innovation wasn’t contained inside a jar.

It was her business model.

Creating an Army of Women Entrepreneurs

Walker developed a network of independent saleswomen known as Walker Agents.

Women were trained not only to use and demonstrate Walker products but also to operate their own small businesses.

They sold products directly to customers, demonstrated hair-care techniques, and built relationships within their communities.

For Black women living in an era when employment opportunities were severely restricted by both racism and sexism, the Walker organization offered something extraordinary:

A pathway toward financial independence.

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Thousands of women eventually became associated with the Walker sales network.

Walker also established training programs and beauty schools where women learned hair care, sales techniques, personal presentation, and business skills.

In many ways, the Walker Agents represented an early nationwide network of women-owned microbusinesses.

Building a Manufacturing Empire

As demand increased, Walker expanded her operation.

In 1910, she moved the headquarters of the Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company to Indianapolis, Indiana.

The city offered strong transportation connections and access to a growing Black business community.

Her operation eventually included manufacturing facilities, a laboratory, training schools, mail-order operations, and a national network of sales representatives.

Walker became one of the most prominent Black business leaders in America.

Her success was particularly remarkable considering that she had begun her adult life working as a washerwoman.

Was Madam C. J. Walker America’s First Female Self-Made Millionaire?

Walker is frequently described as America’s first female self-made millionaire.

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That description has become an important part of her legacy, although historians have debated exactly when her fortune crossed the million-dollar threshold and how the title should be defined.

What isn’t seriously disputed is the extraordinary scale of her accomplishment.

By the time of her death in 1919, Walker owned valuable real estate, operated a major national business and had accumulated substantial wealth at a time when Black Americans faced widespread discrimination, segregation and economic exclusion.

Her rise remains one of the most significant entrepreneurial achievements of the early 20th century.

Wealth With a Purpose

Walker believed success carried responsibilities.

She donated money to Black schools, churches, community organizations and charitable causes.

She supported the NAACP, the National Association of Colored Women and other organizations working to improve opportunities for African Americans.

Walker was also outspoken about racial violence.

Following the horrific East St. Louis racial violence of 1917, she became involved in efforts demanding federal action against lynching.

Her activism demonstrated that she viewed economic power as more than personal achievement.

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It could also be a tool for social change.

Villa Lewaro

Walker’s success was perhaps most visibly represented by her magnificent estate in Irvington, New York.

Known as Villa Lewaro, the mansion was designed by pioneering Black architect Vertner Woodson Tandy.

Completed around 1918, the estate became a gathering place for prominent figures in Black politics, business and culture.

For Walker, the mansion also made a statement.

The daughter of formerly enslaved parents had become wealthy enough to build an extraordinary estate overlooking the Hudson River.

It was a visible challenge to the racial and gender assumptions of her era.

A Legacy Larger Than Hair Care

Madam C. J. Walker died on May 25, 1919, at only 51 years old.

But the business and economic network she created continued after her death.

Her daughter, A’Lelia Walker, became an important cultural figure during the Harlem Renaissance, using her wealth and social connections to support artists, writers and intellectuals.

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More than a century later, Madam C. J. Walker’s influence can still be seen in beauty entrepreneurship, direct-sales businesses and the growing number of Black women building companies of their own.

Her story also provides an important reminder about innovation.

Innovation doesn’t always mean inventing a machine or discovering a scientific principle.

Sometimes innovation means recognizing an overlooked market, improving an existing idea, creating a better system and giving other people an opportunity to succeed along with you.

Why We Remember Madam C. J. Walker

Madam C. J. Walker began life as Sarah Breedlove, the daughter of formerly enslaved parents.

She was orphaned as a child.

She worked as a washerwoman.

She experienced poverty, discrimination and limited opportunities.

Yet she ultimately became a manufacturer, marketer, employer, philanthropist, activist and one of the most celebrated entrepreneurs of her generation.

Perhaps her greatest accomplishment wasn’t simply that she built an empire.

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It was that she created a path for thousands of other women to build something of their own.

That’s why Madam C. J. Walker deserves to be remembered—and why her story belongs in Forgotten Genius Friday.

About Forgotten Genius Friday

Forgotten Genius Friday is an STM Daily News series highlighting inventors, innovators, entrepreneurs and overlooked historical figures whose ideas and achievements helped shape the world around us.

Know someone whose story deserves to be told? Leave a comment below, and subscribe to the STM Daily News newsletter so you don’t miss the next Forgotten Genius Friday.

Related Links

• National Women’s History Museum — Madam C. J. Walker Biography — A detailed overview of Walker’s rise from poverty, entrepreneurship, philanthropy, and civil-rights activism. 
• Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery — Madam C. J. Walker — Features a historic circa-1914 portrait of Walker by photographer Addison N. Scurlock. 
• Indiana Historical Society — Madam C. J. Walker — Explores Walker’s Indianapolis connection and points readers toward the extensive Madam C. J. Walker Family Archives. 
• Indiana Historical Society — Madam C. J. Walker Digital Collection — A particularly valuable resource containing digitized photographs, business records, materials concerning Walker Agents, and documents from the Walker company. 
• Smithsonian — Madam C. J. Walker Hair Product Tin — A fascinating look at an actual Walker hair-care product held by the Smithsonian and the history behind her beauty business.