Frederick McKinley Jones was an African American inventor. He is most known for inventing a portable refrigeration system to transport food, blood, and medicine during World War II.
McKinley Jones is an Ohio native, from Cincinnati. Jones ran away from home when he was 11, working odd jobs around the city until his early 20s. He eventually landed a job doing mechanic work on a farm.
He was eventually able to secure an engineering license in Minnesota. This made him an asset for the United States military in World War I. He was first placed in an all black unit in France. Soon after his arrival, his superiors quickly promoted him to a sergeant.
After the war was over, he came home and continued to work on what he had learned in France. He began designing a portable air cooling unit for trucks. He even adapted it for aquatic vehicles and trains, which led to fresh produce being available all over the United States.
Jones then founded the U.S. Thermo Control Company (U.S. Thermo Control Company is now known as Thermo King). Jones was the first African American elected to the American Society of Refrigeration Engineers, and Thermo Control was worth millions of dollars by 1949.
Illness forced him to an early retirement in the late 1950s. Jones would receive more than 60 patents in his career. Most were related to his refrigeration systems, but he also received patents for a portable X-Ray machine and a thermostat system.
Jones lived until 1967; and since his death, he has been recognized for his achievements in a variety of ways. He was inducted into the Minnesota Inventors Hall of Fame in 1977 and was given the National Medal of Technology posthumously in 1991. Finally, in 2007 he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
