Overcoming challenges through invention

Otis Frank Boykin was an African-American inventor and engineer, born August 9, 1920 in Dallas, Texas. He went to Fisk College in Nashville and continued his education at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago.
His inventions include improved electrical resistors used in computing, missile guidance, and pacemakers (https://rb.gy/2zdc0r).
In 1959, he patented a wire precision resistor which allowed certain amounts of electrical currents to flow for a specific purpose. He created a new resistor that could withstand shifts in temperature and air pressure. It allowed many electronic devices to be made more cheaply and more reliably than it was before.
Boykin also invented a control unit for the pacemaker, a pacemaker is a device implanted into the body to help the heart beat normally. Otis Boykin’s invention allowed the pacemaker to be regulated.
Remember, this was before the impact of the Civil Rights movement had reached its peak, less than five years after Rosa Parks sparked a revolution and about four years before Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous I Have a Dream speech. Boykin’s contributions to the medical community have had a lasting impact on everyone and his inventions have saved countless lives.
Otis Boykin passed away March 13, 1982 in Chicago, Illinois.