If you’ve ever been to the dry cleaners, you have Thomas Jennings to thank.
Thomas Jennings was a free-born African American tailor who, in the early 1800s, invented a process he called “dry-scouring.”
🧺 The details of his method are unknown — a fire destroyed the original formula — but dry-scouring involved using a solvent to remove dirt and grease from clothes without water. It represented the first practical way to clean delicate fabrics like wool, otherwise damaged by the water-based cleaning processes of Jennings’ day.
📝 In 1821, Jennings became the first African American in the United States to receive a commercial patent. He used dry-scouring earnings to buy his family out of slavery and support important causes like the abolitionist movement — serving as a delegate at the ‘First Annual Convention of the People of Color’ in Philadelphia in 1831.
✊🏿 Thomas Jennings was a pioneer in science and social impact. His invention changed the world by establishing a new way of laundering clothes that ushered in today’s $100 billion Dry Cleaning industry and has become a permanent fixture in our towns and cities.
Who in the Arts, past or present, is both an innovator and impact-maker like Jennings?
#connectingthedots
