Black visionaries have made an invaluable contribution to the progress of humanity but are all too often ignored due to overt racism at worst and unconscious bias at best. Looking back over the centuries, we shine a light on the innovators of colour who have never really received the respect and recognition they deserve. Click or scroll through to learn more.

Africa is the cradle of humankind, so it stands to reason many of humanity's earliest innovations arose on the continent. For instance, the first proper beds date back a staggering 200,000 years. The grass sleeping mats were identified earlier this year by a team working at the Border Cave site in the Lebombo Mountains of South Africa. Adding to their sophistication, the beds incorporated ash and camphor leaves to repel mosquitoes and other biting insects.

The oldest evidence of early modern humans using formulated paint was found in 2011 in South Africa's Blombos Cave. Archaeologists uncovered a mixture of ochre, charcoal, crushed seal bones and quartzite that they estimate to be 100,000-years-old. The discovery of the world's first paint processing workshop also proves these early modern humans had a basic knowledge of chemistry.

The harpoon is associated with the Inuit and other peoples of the Arctic region, but the earliest examples of the spear-like implement, the so-called Semliki or Katanda harpoons, were found in 1988 at an archaeological site on the Semliki River in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (which was then known as Zaire). The instrument is thought to have been used to spear prehistoric catfish.

Back to South Africa's fascinating Blombos Cave. In 2004 archaeologists excavating the site found the earliest evidence of jewellery worn by Homo sapiens, perforated shells that appear to have been used as personal adornments, created 75,000 years ago. Before this discovery the oldest jewellery unearthed dated back only 45,000 years.

Staying with Blombos Cave, the earliest evidence of abstract art was discovered at the site in 2018. Estimated to be 73,000 years old, the cross-hatched geometric design in ochre predates the first known abstract drawings from Europe by about 30,000 years. The artwork also indicates the early modern humans that created it possessed a rudimentary knowledge of mathematics.

Every single one of the world's languages, which number in the thousands, owe their existence to an ancient tongue spoken in Africa 50,000 to 70,000 years ago, according to a study by linguists at New Zealand's University of Auckland. The comprehensive research was published in 2011 in the journal Science.

Archaeologists probing South Africa's Sibudu Cave in 2008 chanced upon an amazing discovery while exploring Middle Stone Age deposits: the earliest known sewing needles. Made of bone, they consist of two points along with a spatula-type end, which was presumably used to work leather.

Another great human innovation was uncovered at Sibudu Cave in 2010: the first evidence of arrow technology. The stone arrowheads, which were created around 64,000 years ago, predate previous evidence of projectile weapons found in the cave by several thousand years.

The world's earliest known mathematical artefact, the Lebombo Bone, was discovered in the 1970s in South Africa's Border Cave. Carved from a baboon fibula, the intriguing object dates from around 41,000 BC. A tally stick with 29 notches, the markings may have been used to count the days in the lunar month, possibly to keep track of menstrual cycles.

The Ngwenya Mine is the oldest known mine on the planet. Located on the northwestern border of Swaziland in southern Africa, the site has been carbon-dated to at least 40,000 BC. The people who worked in the mine extracted red haematite and specularite, which were used to make ochre pigment.

The Dogon people of Mali have long been renowned for their impressive astronomical knowledge, particularly of the Sirius B star. Invisible to the naked eye, the elusive heavenly body (pictured to the right in this artist's impression that also shows the much larger Sirius A) was known to the Dogon as far back as 3,200 BC, yet wasn't 'discovered' by Western astronomers until 1862.

British inventor Henry Bessemer is widely credited with the invention of steel in the mid-1850s, but the ancestors of the Haya people, who live along the western shore of Lake Victoria in Tanzania, developed a process to smelt iron at high temperatures and produce steel way back in the fifth century BC.

Most people these days associate the discovery of antibiotics with Alexander Fleming. The British physician and microbiologist first isolated penicillin in 1928, but the ancient Nubians indigenous to present-day southern Egypt and northern Sudan were concocting tetracycline brews to ward off disease 1,670 years ago.

Back in the 15th century, Benin City in modern-day Nigeria was larger than Lisbon and many other European capitals, and boasted all sorts of wonders including walls that were four times longer than the Great Wall of China, meticulously planned thoroughfares and public street lighting. Powered by palm oil, the metal lamps likely predate what has long been cited as the first examples of public street lighting (as opposed to lamps outside homes, which date back to Roman times), which were installed in London in 1417.

An enslaved West African man called Onesimus pioneered vaccination in America after passing on age-old knowledge in 1716 of a method of smallpox inoculation to Cotton Mather, the Puritan minister who had purchased him a decade earlier. Together with a local doctor, Mather successfully put Onesimus' method to the test during a smallpox outbreak in Boston in 1721, paving the way for mass inoculation and British physician Edward Jenner's creation of the first vaccine in 1796.

Enslaved African-American innovators were rarely recognised for their achievements, with their White owners often taking the credit. Eli Whitney is lauded for the invention of the cotton gin, a seed-removing machine which revolutionised the production of cotton, but the farmer and teacher actually got the idea from an enslaved man named Sam, whose father invented a cotton seed-removing comb.

Enslaved African-Americans were barred from holding patents, meaning only free Black people could own and gain financially from their inventions. A freedman, Thomas Jennings, was the first African-American patent holder. Jennings invented dry cleaning in 1820, was granted a patent the following year and used the money he'd earned from the invention to buy the freedom of enslaved relatives, as well as support abolitionist causes.

Similar to the cotton gin, the mechanical reaper transformed agriculture around the world. It is also credited to a White innovator, the businessperson Cyrus McCormick, but as is the case with the cotton gin the reaper was co-invented by an enslaved African-American, in this instance a man called Jo Anderson, who worked closely with McCormick on the 1831 innovation.

Born into slavery, Benjamin Montgomery invented a steam propeller in the 1850s that could operate effectively in shallow waters, but as an enslaved person he was cruelly denied a patent for his innovation. Montgomery did, however, become successful and influential. After his freedom was granted after the Civil War, the inventor ran a popular local store, which eventually gave him enough money to purchase the plantation he had worked on. Montgomery amassed further wealth and was the first African-American official elected in Mississippi.

While the light bulb itself was invented by Thomas Edison, the carbon filament that allowed bulbs to last longer was created by African-American inventor Lewis Latimer in 1881 working alongside the more celebrated Edison. Prior to his invention, fast-burning materials such as bamboo had been used as a filament. After serving in the military during the Civil War, Latimer worked in a patent attorney office where he taught himself mechanical drawing by copying the draughtsmen there. His talent saw him promoted from office assistant to draughtsman, and as well as the bulb filament Latimer also invented an early air-conditioning unit and railroad car bathroom.

Like Benjamin Montgomery, Sarah Goode was born into slavery. After receiving her freedom following the Civil War, Goode moved from Toledo, Ohio to Chicago and opened a furniture store, where she invented the cabinet bed, a precursor to the modern sofa bed, which she went on to patent in 1885, becoming one of the first African-American women to be granted a patent.

Humanity has innovator Garrett Morgan to thank for the gas mask. Nicknamed the 'Black Edison', Morgan invented his safety hood in 1912 and patented the gas mask precursor in 1914. The African-American inventor was extremely prolific. During his lifetime, Morgan was granted a plethora of patents for everything from traffic lights to hair straighteners and an improved sewing machine.

The first successful leprosy treatment was developed in 1916 by African-American chemist Alice Ball, who came up with the pioneering injectable oil treatment at the University of Hawaii. Tragically, Ball died in a lab accident shortly after inventing the treatment. She was just 24 years old. We can only imagine what the gifted chemist would have gone on to achieve if she hadn't passed away so young.

African-American physician Charles Drew is dubbed 'the father of blood banking' for very good reason. The first Black person to receive a Doctor of Medical Science degree from Columbia University, Drew created a method of preserving blood plasma in 1938. A game-changing process, it went on to save countless lives during World War II.

Also in 1938, Black innovator Frederick McKinley Jones invented mobile refrigeration, enabling perishable foods to be transported over long distances. Before Jones' invention, which consisted of a small compressor unit attached under the truck, salt and ice were used, an unreliable method that often led to spoiling. Jones soon co-founded the Thermo King Corporation, which produced the mobile refrigeration unit. The business went international, and when it was sold in 1997 it was achieving more than $1 billion in annual sales. Mostly self-taught due to his lack of formal education, Jones became the first African-American to be awarded the National Medal of Technology.  

Similarly, Black inventor Mary Kenner was self-taught, which makes her genius all the more impressive. In 1956, the African-American innovator created the world's first sanitary belt and followed this up with a number of other health- and hygiene-related inventions, including a novel toilet tissue holder and an attachment for a mobility walker.

Otis Boykin notched up 26 patents during his lifetime, the most important of which were his pacemaker control unit, a development that transformed the control of abnormal heart rhythms, and wire precision resistor. Invented by Boykin in 1959, the technology has been used in computers, TVs, radios, and more.

Concerned by the high levels of property crime in her New York City neighbourhood, Marie Van Brittan Brown, who was working as a nurse at the time, pretty much created the multibillion-dollar home security industry in 1966 when she invented, along with her husband Albert Brown, the world's first CCTV home security system. The couple were granted a patent in 1969 and went on to win numerous awards for the innovation.

African-American physicist Valerie Thomas developed the 3D-Illusion transmitter in 1977 while working for NASA and patented the trailblazing device a year later. Thomas' innovation essentially made the invention of a long list of 3D technologies possible, including 3D film, 3D TV and modern medical imaging, and her transmitter is still used by NASA to this day.

Inventors who made a fortune from just one product

Harlem-born ophthalmologist Patricia Bath overcame prejudice to invent a laser cataract removal device called the Laserphaco Probe in 1986, and went on to patent it in 1988. Bath, who passed away last year, worked tirelessly to tackle vision loss in the Black community and also co-founded the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness. 

Famous inventions their creations later regretted

An ingenious invention that effectively made the internet and other modern IT technologies possible, the linked supercomputer system is the brainchild of Nigerian computer scientist Philip Emeagwali, who in 1989 came up with the idea of linking multiple microprocessors to turbo-charge computing power after observing bees in nature.

Now take a look at some amazing inventions dismissed as fads that wouldn't last