Meredith Gourdine, New Jersey Inventor

Thomas Edison is well known as a New Jersey inventor, sometimes called the "Wizard of Menlo Park" referring to the town he lived in. Lesser known is another Newark-based inventor, Meredith Gourdine, born in Newark and raised across the state line in Brooklyn. He returned home to Livington, NJ to set up his own company, Gourdine Systems. He was awarded 70 patents, most in the area of thermal management and electrogasdynamics.

According to his obituary in the New York Times (11/24/1998), "The companies he founded worked on purifying the air and converting low-grade coal into inexpensive, transportable and high-voltage electrical energy. They produced a commercial air-pollution deterrent, a high powered industrial paint spray and a device to eliminate fog above airports."

In his college years at Cornell he won a number of championships in track and was on the 1952 US Olympic team in Helsinki. He won the silver medal in the long jump; the gold medalist's jump was only an inch and half longer than Gourdine's.

He also served as an officer in the U.S. Navy. This was at a time when African Americans were not necessarily welcomed or well-represented in either the Olympics or as officers in the military.

As one bit of trivia, Groudine's one time track coach also coached actor Roscoe Lee Browne who was known as a half mile runner before is success in films. (NYT 7/16/1978, p. S9)