Lewis Howard Latimer was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, on September 4, 1848, the youngest of the four children of Rebecca Latimer (1823 –1910) and George Latimer (1818–1897).Before Lewis was born, his mother and father, George and Rebecca, escaped from slavery in Virginia and fled to Chelsea, Massachusetts on October 4, 1842. The day they arrived in Boston, George was recognized by a former colleague of his former slave owner and was arrested a few days later, on October 20, 1842. George’s trial received great notoriety, he was represented by Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison. He was eventually able to purchase his freedom and live with his family in Chelsea, Massachusetts. When Latimer was young he also spent time the time before his father left helping him in his barbershop.

Lewis Howard Latimer joined the U.S. Navy at the age of 15 on September 16, 1863, and served as a Landsman on the USS Massasoit. After receiving an honorable discharge from the U.S. Navy on July 3, 1865, he gained employment as an office boy with a patent law firm, Crosby Halstead and Gould, with a $3.00 per week salary. He learned how to use a set square, ruler, and other drafting tools. Later, after his boss recognized his talent for sketching patent drawings, Latimer was promoted to the position of head draftsman earning $20.00 a week by 1872.

Lewis Howard Latimer joined the U.S. Navy at the age of 15 on September 16, 1863, and served as a Landsman on the USS Massasoit. After receiving an honorable discharge from the U.S. Navy on July 3, 1865, he gained employment as an office boy with a patent law firm, Crosby Halstead and Gould, with a $3.00 per week salary. He learned how to use a set square, ruler, and other drafting tools. Later, after his boss recognized his talent for sketching patent drawings, Latimer was promoted to the position of head draftsman earning $20.00 a week by 1872.

Latimer married Mary Wilson Lewis on November 15, 1873, in Fall River, Massachusetts. She was born in Providence, Rhode Island, the daughter of Louisa M. and William Lewis. The couple had two daughters, Emma Jeanette (1883–1978) and Louise Rebecca (1890–1963). Jeanette married Gerald Fitzherbert Norman, the first black person hired as a high school teacher in the New York City public school system, and had two children: Winifred Latimer Norman (1914–2014), a social worker who served as the guardian of her grandfather’s legacy, and Gerald Latimer Norman (1911–1990), who became an administrative law judge.

In 1874, Latimer co-patented (with Charles M. Brown) an improved toilet system for railroad cars called the Water Closet for Railroad Cars (U.S. Patent 147,363).

In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell employed Latimer, then a draftsman at Bell’s patent law firm, to draft the necessary drawings required to receive a patent for Bell’s telephone.

In 1879, Latimer and his wife, Mary, moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut, along with his mother, Rebecca, and his brother, William. They settled in a neighborhood called “Little Liberia,” which had been established in the early 19th century by free blacks. (The landmarked Mary and Eliza Freeman Houses are the last surviving buildings on their original foundations of this community.) Other family members already living there were his brother, George A. Latimer, and his wife, Jane, and his sister, Margaret, and her husband, Augustus T. Hawley, and their children. Mary died in Bridgeport in 1924.

In 1879, he moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut, and was hired as assistant manager and draftsman for the U.S. Electric Lighting Company, a company owned by Hiram Maxim, a rival of Thomas A. Edison.

Latimer received a patent on January 17, 1882 for the “Process of Manufacturing Carbons”, an improved method for the production of carbon filaments for lightbulbs.

In 1884, he was invited to work with Thomas Edison. Along with the work he did with Edison he was also responsible for translating data into German and French. As well as gathering that information.

The Edison Electric Light Company in New York City hired Latimer in 1884 as a draftsman and an expert witness in patent litigation on electric lights. While at Edison, Latimer wrote the first book on electric lighting, entitled Incandescent Electric Lighting (1890), and supervised the installation of public electric lights throughout New York, Philadelphia, Montreal, and London.

When that company was combined in 1892 with the Thomson-Houston Electric Company to form General Electric, he continued to work in the legal department.

He was also an early advocate of civil rights in his era. In 1895 Lewis wrote a statement in connection with the National Conference of Colored Men about equality, security, and opportunity.

In 1911, he became a patent consultant to law firms.

In 1924, After the Board of Patent Control dissolved Latimer went on to work with Hammer and Schwartz until he retired.

For 25 years, from 1903 until his death in 1928, Latimer lived with his family in a home on Holly Avenue in what is known now as East Flushing section of Queens, New York. Latimer died on December 11, 1928, at the age of 80. Approximately sixty years after his death, his home was moved from Holly Avenue to 137th Street in Flushing, Queens, which is about 1.4 miles northwest of its original location.

On 3 September 2020, USA Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden mistakenly claimed that a Black man had invented the light bulb, not “a White guy named Edison.” CNN later corrected Biden’s error: “No, a Black man didn’t invent the light bulb. But Lewis Howard Latimer made it better”.