Talk:George Washington Carver

From Academic Kids

How common are Americans who get their name like this: the last name is the same as the rest of the family, but the first and middle names come from someone who is not related to the family?? - (unsigned)

• Naming patterns go through trends and fashions, and it's not particularly common now - for two names, anyway, there are more "Britney's" than you'd expect from chance alone.... But there were times in the past when it was very common to name a child after an unrelated person whom one admired, and president's names ("George Washington", "Thomas Jefferson") and other "patriotic" notables ("Benjamin Franklin") were not at all uncommon choices. - Nunh-huh 02:19, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)

• See Winfield Scott and Winfield Scott Hancock for another interesting example. One of my own ancestors was also named after Winfield Scott, a popular war hero in the 19th Century. H2O 19:34, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

In 1974 the Carver Museum at Tuskegee Institute, which Carver had helped develop, credited him with 287 peanut products. One hundred twenty-three were foods and beverages, sixty-eight were paints or dyes, the rest were cosmetics, stock foods, medicinal preparations, and miscellaneous items. Many items were duplicated under different names: listed as separate entries, for example, were bar candy, chocolate-coated peanuts, and peanut chocolate fudge; all-purpose cream, face cream, face lotion, and hand cream; thirty dyes for cloth, nineteen dyes for leather, and seventeen wood stains. Many of the products were not original in any case. Bar Candy using peanuts and chocolate-coated peanuts were already being ate in restaurants in New Orleans as early as the late 1880s to early 1890s. Even salted peanuts were an entry. One particular entry, the "face bleach and tan remover," is still unknown because Carver did not present forumlas for most of his products. Many consider this particular invention to be bogus, including it with the previously mentioned face creams. He did come up with a lot of uses for the peanut, but many were duplicated, sometimes already discovered, or bogus alltogether. No one knows why he included the duplicated inventions. Some claim that he wanted to run the number of his inventions up while others attribute it to old age since he did catalogue his inventions for the museum when he was quite old. The latter is probably closer to the truth.

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i haven't been active in the wikipedia for a long time, but... wtf. this nonsense about carving peanuts and relationships with his assistant has been sitting unchanged a month? Wmorgan

• I made a small edit to the article after the "sculpture" nonsense appeared and am embarrassed that I didn't catch it. I have to admit, it was funny, though. H2O 23:05, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Carver was gay and had an assistant named Austin Curtis, Jr., who was a former teacher. He helped him with many of his projects, and the two briefly dated as well.

Is this serious? It was added by a logged-in contributor, but similar previous additions were anonymous and were reverted as vandalism. -Montréalais 08:17, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

No one knows if Carver was gay. Why does it even matter? People are too obsessed about stuff like that these days.

We disagree with the comment about a relationship between Carver and Curtis. According to Marilyn Nelson the professor wrote to Curtis' father that Austin seemed to him more like a son than an assistant. Curtis had become baby Carver, and his children had aquired a third grandpa.

We agree with your disagree that Carver and Curtis were like father and son. Curtis was like the heir to Carver's plant world. I do however feel that he may of had a relationship with Jim Hardwick. His shock about the marriage shows he had more than a mentor relationship.

I think this article should be more detailed. I have just added several details. WikiPedia should be more focused towards what an actual encyclopedia would. Heck, this site has more information on the Simpsons, a cartoon show, than George Washington Carver, a genius that invented dozens of things commonly used today. --MAX Allen

GW Carter invented dozens of things we use today?

Name one.

Most of his "discoveries" were either not novel or were of mere curiousity value.

Please name one discovery of his that impacts us in any way, shape or form.

• I think you'll agree that at least a few of these things he developed/improved have lasting use:

Adhesives Axle Grease Bleach Buttermilk Cheese (synthetic) Chili Sauce Cream Creosote Dyes Flour Fuel Briquettes Ink Instant Coffee Insulating Board Linoleum Mayonnaise Meal Meat Tenderizer Metal Polish Milk Flakes Mucilage Paper Rubbing Oils Salve Soil Conditioner Shampoo Shoe Polish Shaving Cream Sugar Synthetic Marble Synthetic Rubber Talcum Powder Vanishing Cream Wood Stains Wood Filler Worcestershire Sauce

• Source: Hattie Carwell. Blacks in Science: Astrophysicist to Zoologist. Hicksville, N.Y.: Exposition Press), 1977. p. 18.

And he was given 3 patents for developing cosmetics, paints and stains from soybean.

U.S. 1,522,176 Cosmetics and Producing the Same. January 6, 1925. George W. Carver. Tuskegee, Alabama.

U.S. 1,541,478 Paint and Stain and Producing the Same June 9, 1925. George W. Carver. Tuskegee, Alabama.

U.S. 1,632,365 Producing Paints and Stains. June 14, 1927. George W. Carver. Tuskegee, Alabama.

--nixie 01:47, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't agree.

Most of the items and uses he supposedly developed were either not original, were poorly described (he left no formulas behind for many of his "creations"), or of no more than novelty application.

That he only had three patents out of his reams of asserted "inventions" demonstrates that he originated very little. Peanuts were important in cosmetics long before Carver came along.

I must point out that you have failed to point to a single Carver discovery still in use today. That he, for example, may have worked on a lubricant does not mean he invented a lubricant that was important in any way. I could create a lubricant from Frankenberry cereal, but that does not mean my product is useful or economical.

A scholarly article penned by a National Park Service historian, Barry Mackintosh, reveals that Carver was more of a self-promoter than a pioneer: http://www.network54.com/Forum/thread?forumid=256246&messageid=1088896552&lp=1088896552

He was largely a failure as an educator, and not much of a scientist. He claimed that "Mr. Creator" was his muse in the lab, revealing uses for the peanut to Carver.

Carver did nothing to introduce crop rotation

This is simply laughably false, and suggests Carver was somehow a pioneer in crop rotation.

This article is typical of the leftest slant to wikipedia. GW Carver can honestly be described as 95% showman and publicist/5% amateur scientist.

If you can find some sources which disprove Carver's research into crop rotation then please present them. A simple Google search on Carver and crop rotation (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=Carver+%22crop+rotation%22&btnG=Search) brings up plenty of sources that say otherwise. Also, please sign your talk page comments (by adding four tildes (~) at the end) and, if you going to be editing much, a username is a big help. -Willmcw 03:45, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

In all fairness to the anon, he did not develop crop rotation, but he taught the technique in the Southern United States, this article did make some overzealous statements about Carvers acheievments, which I have been adjusting with research--nixie 03:51, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Carver did absolutely nothing to introduce crop rotation:

Carver sought to extend the station's influence with the bulletins, leaflets, and circulars appearing under his name from 1898 to his death. "But few technical terms will be used," he promised in his first bulletin, and all but one of the forty he issued offered elementary information on farming and related rural concerns to the uneducated farmer.[29] The bulletins and other farming publications contained little of substance that had not already been printed in bulletins of the Agriculture Department or other experiment stations, and Carver's themes were not new even at Tuskegee. Much of what he would preach was summarized in a leaflet published by the institute before his arrival: "Do not plant too much cotton, but more corn, peas, sugar-cane, sweet-potatoes etc., raise hogs, cows, chickens, etc." [1] (http://www.network54.com/Forum/thread?forumid=256246&messageid=1088896552&lp=1088896552)

-- Sixpackshakur

If you take the time to read the article you'll see that the overstament of Carvers achievments has been removed--nixie 23:00, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

I read the article but was responding to Willmcw, as is my privilege. Sixpackshakur 02:42, 25 May 2005 (UTC)