Cleveland inventor Garrett A. Morgan, a son of former slaves, had a gift for inventing life-saving devices, including firefighter gas masks and the precursors of modern traffic lights.

Furthermore, to modern conservators, retouching has ethical considerations. Damage and ageing constitute part of an object’s history, and retouching can distort its context and meaning.

A decade earlier, he patented the first gas mask in response to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which killed 146 garment workers, mostly young women, in New York City in 1911.