 Andrew Jackson Beard

Andrew Jackson Beard (1849–1921) was an American inventor, who introduced two improvements to the automatic railroad car coupler in 1897 and 1899, and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Akron, Ohio in 2006 for this achievement.Born in 1849, Andrew Beard spent the first fifteen years of his life as a slave on a small farm in Eastlake, Alabama.