Andrew Jackson Beard

Andrew Jackson Beard was a prominent African American entrepreneur and inventor in the 1880s and 1890s. Largely self-educated, he invented, among other things, a specially designed double plow, a type of rotary steam engine, and a device for the automated coupling of railroad cars that has been credited with saving many lives. He also founded several successful businesses in Jefferson County, including a real estate firm and a taxi company.

Andrew Jackson Beard was born March 29,1849 in Jefferson County, Alabama. After he was given his freedom in 1864, he married and became a farmer near Birmingham, Alabama for some five years, but recalled visiting Montgomery in 1872 with 50 bushels of apples drawn by oxen. He is quoted as saying, “It took me three weeks to make the trip. I quit farming after that.” Instead, he built and operated a flourmill in Hardwicks, Alabama. In 1880, Beard became preoccupied with the mechanics of his new plow invention. Hence, in 1881 he patented one of his plows and sold it, in 1884, for $4,000 ($130,000 today).

In 1887, he invented another plow and sold it for $5,200 ($170,000 today). With this money he went into the real estate business and made about $30,000. In 1889, Beard invented a rotary steam engine, which was patented in July 1892. He claimed that his steam engine was cheaper to build and operate than steam engines and it would not explode. 

While Beard worked on his rotary steam engine, he experimented with perhaps his finest invention, an automatic car coupler idea. In the early days of American railroading, coupling was done manually. Car coupling was extremely dangerous and required a railroad worker to brace himself between cars and drop a metal pin into place at the exact moment the cars came together. Few railroad men kept all their fingers, many lost arms, and hands. And many were caught between cars and crushed to death during the hazardous split-second operation. Beard himself lost a leg because of a car coupling accident. His idea safeguarded two cars by merely bumping them together. He invented the Automatic Railroad Car Coupler, commonly referred to as the “Jenny Coupler”. The patent for his invention was issued in November 1897. Andrew Beard’s invention, which was improved in 1899, is the forerunner of today’s automatic coupler. Unfortunately, Beard’s life, after 1897, is unknown.