Earl Silas Tupper was born in 1907 in Berlin, New Hampshire. Tupper’s first contact with plastic grew from his job at the DuPont Chemical Company which had been developing plastic before World War II. Eager to work with the new material, yet too poor to buy refined plastic, Tupper asked if he could purchase any left-over substance. His supervisor at DuPont gave him a black, inflexible piece of polyethylene slag, a waste product of the oil refining process. Tupper purified the slag and molded it to create light-weight, non-breakable containers, cups, bowls, and plates. He later designed liquid-proof, air-tight lids by duplicating the lid of a paint can, except in reverse. Tupper founded the Tupperware Plastics Company in 1938, and in 1946, he introduced Tupper Plastics to hardware and department stores.

Tupperware; was not welcome at first. Consumers were confused as to how to operate the lids. Store sales lagged. In the late forties, home demonstrations of the products proved enormously successful, indicating to Tupper the potential power of direct demonstrations. By 1951, he had pulled all merchandise off store shelves and channeled it solely through direct home sales. Tupper hired Brownie Wise, a charismatic single mother and one of his first direct sellers, to design the Tupperware; direct selling system. The concept grew to be a household phenomenon, the Tupperware Party.

Today, a Tupperware demonstration begins approximately every two seconds some place in the world with yearly net sales exceeding $1.2 billion.

    Patsy Sherman was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1930. After college graduation, she joined 3M as a research chemist and was assigned to work on fluorochemical polymers. Her work was an essential part of the introduction of 3M’s first stain repellent and soil release textile treatments which have grown into an entire family of products known as Scotchgard® protectors.

Sherman regards the serendipitous discovery of Scotchgard® as one of her most significant works because many experts had written that such a product was "thermodynamically impossible." That day in the lab is legendary. Sherman and her colleague, Sam Smith, were working on another project when they observed that an accidental spill on a white tennis shoe would not wash off nor would solvent remove it. The area resisted soiling. They recognized the commercial potential of its application to fabrics during manufacture and by the consumer at home. So go ahead and put your feet up… the dirt will wash off.

Sherman was inducted into the Minnesota Inventors Hall of Fame in 1983.

    "He could have added fortune to fame, but, caring for neither, found happiness and honor in being helpful to the world." George Washington Carver’s epitaph sums up a life-time of innovative discovery. Born into slavery, freed as a child, curious throughout life, Carver profoundly affected the lives of people throughout the nation. He successfully shifted Southern farming away from risky cotton, which depletes soil of its nutrients, to nitrate-producing crops such as peanuts, peas, sweet potatoes, pecans, and soybeans. Farmers began rotating crops of cotton one year with peanuts the next.

From his laboratory at Alabama’s Tuskegee Institute, Carver developed 325 different uses for the excess peanuts and 118 products from the sweet potato. Other Carver innovations include synthetic marble from sawdust, plastics from woodshavings, and writing paper from wisteria vines.

Upon his death in 1943, Carver contributed his life savings to establish a research institute at Tuskegee. His birthplace of Diamond Grove, Missouri, was declared a national monument in 1953, and he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1990.

Carver only patented three of his many discoveries. "God gave them to me," he said, "How can I sell them to someone else?"

   When we crave fresh fruits and vegetables in the middle of winter, we can thank Clarence Birdseye for the next best thing. Birdseye invented, developed, and commercialized a method for quick-freezing food products in convenient packages and without altering the original taste. While Birdseye has become a household name, his process has evolved into a multi-billion dollar industry.

Birdseye was born in 1886 in Brooklyn, New York A taxidermist by trade, but a chef at heart, Birdseye wished his family could have fresh food all year. After observing the people of the Arctic preserving fresh fish and meat in barrels of sea water quickly frozen by the arctic temperatures, he concluded that it was the rapid freezing in the extremely low temperatures that made food retain freshness when thawed and cooked months later.

In 1923, with an investment of $7 for an electric fan, buckets of brine, and cakes of ice, Birdseye invented and later perfected a system of packing fresh food into waxed cardboard boxes and flash-freezing under high pressure. The Goldman-Sachs Trading Corporation and the Postum Company (later the General Foods Corporation) bought Birdseye’s patents and trademarks in 1929 for $22 million. The first quick-frozen vegetables, fruits, seafoods, and meat were sold to the public for the first time in 1930 in Springfield, Massachusetts, under the tradename Birds Eye Frosted Foods®.

Birdseye turned his attention to other interests and invented an infrared heat lamp, a spotlight for store window displays, a harpoon for marking whales, then established companies to market his products.

    Fred Waring, a one-time Penn State architectural and engineering student, was always fascinated by gadgets. He first achieved fame fronting the big band, Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians, but the blender made Waring a household name.

Waring was the financial source and marketing force that thrust the Waring Blendor® into the marketplace, but Fred Osius invented and patented the famous blending machine in 1933. Osius knew that Waring had a fondness for new inventions, and the blender needed improvements. Talking his way into Waring’s dressing room following a live radio broadcast in New York’s Vanderbilt Theatre, Osius pitched his idea and received a promise to back further research.

Six months and $25,000 later, the blender still suffered technical difficulties. Undaunted, Waring had the blender redesigned, and the Miracle Mixer was introduced to the public at the National Restaurant Show in Chicago in September 1937. It retailed for $29.75. The Waring Corporation succeeded the Miracle Mixer Corporation in May 1938, and the mixer’s name was changed to the Waring Blendor®.

Waring went on a one-man marketing campaign that began with hotels and restaurants he visited while touring with his band, and later spread to upscale stores such as Bloomingdale’s and B. Altman’s. Waring once touted the Blendor to a St. Louis reporter saying, "… this mixer is going to revolutionize American drinks." And it did.

The Waring Blendor® became an important tool in hospitals for the implementation of specific diets, as well as a vital scientific research device. Dr. Jonas Salk used it while developing the vaccine for polio. In 1954, the millionth Waring Blendor® was sold, and it is still popular today.

    The Campbell Kids have been selling soup since 1904. Grace Wiederseim Drayton, an illustrator and writer, added some sketches to her husband’s layout for a Cambell Company’s advertising account for condensed soup. When Campbell advertising agents were looking for a way to reach the housewife, they decided it should be through "child appeal." They remembered Mrs. Wiederseim’s sketches. In the beginning, the Kids were plain boys and girls. Later they took on the personas of policemen, sailors, soldiers, and other professions.

Drayton was an accomplished writer and illustrator in other areas, but she will always be the mother of the Campbell Kids. She drew the Kids for the company advertising for nearly 20 years before handing them over to a new group of artists. Drayton’s designs were so popular that doll makers capitalized on their popularity. The company gave E. I. Horsemen Co., Inc. permission to market dolls with the Campbell label on the sleeve. Horseman secured two U.S. design patents for the dolls’ clothes.

   In 1869, fruit merchant Joseph Campbell and icebox manufacturer Abraham Anderson started the Anderson & Campbell Preserve Company in Camden, New Jersey. By 1877 they each had different visions for the company. Campbell bought Anderson’s share in the company and expanded the business to include ketchup, salad dressing, mustard, and other sauces. Beefsteak ketchup became Campbell’s hottest seller.

A pivotal development in soup occurred when Dr. John Dorrance, nephew of a wealthy Campbell’s investor went to work for the company. At 24, armed with a chemistry degree from MIT and a Ph.D. from the University of Gottengen in Germany, Dorrance turned down prestigious teaching positions to work with Campbell. He made only $7.50 per week, but believed strongly in the company’s potential. Dorrance realized that soup--inexpensive to make but very expensive to ship—could become a powerful product if he removed its heaviest ingredient: water. Dorrance crafted condensed soup out of hardy stock ingredients, slashed the price of soup from $.30 to $.10 per can, and revolutionized the industry. By 1922, soup was such an integral part of the company’s presence in America, that Campbell’s formally accepted "Soup" into its name.

Today, Campbell’s Soup Company®, with its famous red and white label, remains a staple in the kitchen as well as American culture.

    Peter Cooper, inventor of the "Tom Thumb" locomotive, received a patent for a gelatin dessert in 1845, but he never promoted the product. In 1895, Pearl B. Wait, a carpenter in Le Roy, New York, who dealt in patent medicines, improved Cooper’s formula, and, at his wife’s suggestion, called it Jell-O®. They, too, were unsuccessful. Frank Woodward, a school dropout and, who by the age of 20 had his own business, bought the rights to Jell-O for $450. Among the products Woodward marketed were several patent medicines, Raccoon Corn Plasters, and a roasted coffee substitute called Grain-O. Sales were still slow, so Woodward offered to sell the rights to Jell-O® to his plant superintendent for $35. However, before the final sale, intensive advertising paid off. By 1906, sales reached $1 million. By sending out nattily dressed salesmen to demonstrate Jell-O and distributing 15 million copies of a Jell-O recipe book containing celebrity favorites, popularity rose. Woodward’s Genesee Pure Food Company was renamed Jell-O Company in 1923, and later merged with Postum Cereal to become the General Foods Corporation.

   In 1898, the New York Biscuit Company and the American Biscuit and Manufacturing Company merged over 100 bakeries into the National Biscuit Company, later Nabisco®. Founders Adolphus Green and William Moore, orchestrated the merger and the company quickly rose to first place in the manufacturing and marketing of cookies and crackers in America. In 1906, the company moved its headquarters from Chicago to New York.

Favorites like Oreo Cookies®, Barnum’s Animal Crackers®, Honey Maid Grahams®, Ritz® crackers, and Wheat Thins® became staples in American snackfoods. Later Nabisco added Planters Peanuts®, Fleishmann’s® margarines and spreads, A.1.® steak sauce, and Grey Poupon® mustards to its offerings.

    King Camp Gillette was born in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin in 1855. To support himself when the family’s home was destroyed in the Chicago Fire of 1871, Gillette became a traveling salesman. This work led him to William Painter, the inventor of the disposable Crown Cork bottle cap, who assured Gillette that a successful invention was one that was purchased over and over again by satisfied customers.

In 1895, after several years of considering and rejecting possible inventions, Gillette suddenly had a brilliant idea while shaving one morning. It was an entirely new razor and blade that flashed in his mind—a razor with a safe, inexpensive, and disposable blade.

It took six years for Gillette’s idea to evolve. During that time, technical experts told Gillette that it would be impossible to produce steel that was hard, thin, and inexpensive enough for commercial development of the disposable razor blade. Then, in 1901, MIT graduate William Nickerson agreed to try.

By 1903, he had succeeded. Production of the Gillette® safety razor and blade began as the Gillette Safety Razor Company started operations in South Boston. Sales grew steadily. During World War I, the U.S. Government issued Gillette® safety razors to the entire armed forces. By the end of the war, some 3.5 million razors and 32 million blades were put into military hands, thereby converting an entire nation to the Gillette® safety razor.

    Born Max Faktor in Lodz, Poland during the 1870s, Max Factor became the father of modern make-up. With 10 children, the Factor parents could not afford formal education for their children, so at the age of eight Max was placed in apprenticeship to a dentist-pharmacist. Years of mixing potions instilled in him a fascination with the human form. Factor opened his own shop in a suburb of Moscow, selling hand-made rouges, creams, fragrances, and wigs. A traveling theatrical troupe wore Factor’s make-up while performing for Russian nobility, and the door to fame and fortune opened wide. The Russian nobility appointed Factor the official cosmetic expert for the royal family and the Imperial Russian Grand Opera.

In 1904, Factor and his family came to America. He had a fresh start in St. Louis at the 1904 World’s Fair, selling his rouges and creams, and operating under the name given to him at Ellis Island, Max Factor. But he had stars in his eyes. Factor envisioned movie actors and actresses needing make-up and wigs. He moved his family to Los Angeles in 1908. In 1914, Factor created a make-up specifically for movie-actors that, unlike theatrical make-up, would not crack or cake. Soon movie stars were filing through Max Factor’s make-up studio, eager to sample the "flexible greasepaint" while producers sought Factor’s human hair wigs. He allowed the wigs to be rented to the producers of old westerns on the condition that his sons were given parts as extras. The boys would keep an eye on the expensive wigs. Max Factor introduced cosmetics to the public in the 1920s, insisting that every girl could look like a movie star by using Max Factor® make-up.

    Spray cans were being tested as early as 1862. They were constructed from heavy steel and were too bulky to be commercially successful. In 1949, 27-year-old Robert H. Abplanalp’s invention of a crimp on valve enabled liquids to be sprayed from a can under the pressure of an inert gas. Spray cans, mainly containing insecticides, were available to the public in 1947 as a result of their use by U.S. soldiers for preventing insect-borne diseases. Abplanalp’s invention, made of lightweight aluminum, made the cans a cheap and practical way to dispense liquids, foams, powders, and creams. His Precision Valve Corporation earned over $100 million manufacturing one billion aerosol cans annually in the United States and one-half billion in 10 other countries. In the mid-1970s, concern over the use of fluorocarbons adversely effecting the ozone layer drove Abplanalp back into the lab for a solution. Substituting water-soluble hydrocarbons for the damaging fluorocarbons created an environmentally friendly aerosol can that did not harm the environment.

    Kleenex® tissue was invented as a means to remove cold cream. Early advertisements linked it to Hollywood makeup departments, sometimes including endorsements from movie stars. In 1930, Kimberly-Clark Corporation, the manufacturer, became intrigued by the number of letters from customers stating that they used their product as a disposable handkerchief. A test was conducted in the Peoria, Illinois newspapers and similar ads stressing the two uses were run, asking readers to respond. Results showed that 60% used the tissue for blowing their nose, advertising was changed and sales doubled, proving that the customer is always right.

   The first patent issued for a medicine was granted in 1796 to Samuel Lee, Jr. of Windham, Connecticut. His pills promised to cure all kinds of ailments.

The term "patent medicine" does not necessarily mean the potion is patented. The term appeared in England in the 1600s when medicine only had to be original but no proof of effectiveness or safety was required. Since to patent meant to disclose the contents, most kept their recipes secret, but continued to call them patent medicines.

Not all medicines were of the snake oil variety. In 1897 Felix Hoffman of the Bayer company found a better method to synthesize acetylsalicylic acid. In 1899 Bayer began marketing the new product as Aspirin. Bayer lost is rights to the trademark, as aspirin became a generic term.

    Soap has always been a part of human history. The soap used by the colonists was made by hand from potash or pearlash added to rendered fats. Most Americans today purchase a variety of soaps at a store.

A soap maker at the Procter and Gamble company had no idea a new innovation was about to surface when he went to lunch one day in 1879. He forgot to turn off the soap mixer, and more than the usual amount of air was shipped into the batch of pure white soap that the company sold under the name The White Soap. Fearing he would get in trouble, the soap maker kept the mistake a secret and packaged and shipped the air-filled soap to customers around the country. Soon customers were asking for more "soap that floats." When company officials found out what happened, they turned it into one of the company’s most successful products, Ivory Soap.

   In 1893, Whitcomb Judson, a Chicago inventor with dozens of patents, attempted to invent a replacement for the lengthy shoelaces used to fasten men’s and women’s boots. On August 29, 1893, Judson received a patent for his "clasp-locker," a somewhat reliable hook and eye fastener. That same year, he displayed his innovative closure at the Chicago World’s Fair. Despite improvements, Universal Fastener--the company he formed with his associate, Lewis Walker--was never successful at marketing his invention. Gideon Sundbach, a Swedish immigrant trained in electrical engineering and an employee of Universal Fastener, further refined Judson’s closure, but it still had problems. Grief stricken at the death of his wife, Sundbach set to work and by December of 1913 had designed a successful zipper that is virtually the same today.

During World War I the U.S. Army used the closure in uniforms and gear. In 1923, B.F. Goodrich marketed galoshes with the fastener and christened the invention the "zipper," taking the name from the "zip" sound it made when opened or closed. By the end of the 1920s, zippers were used in articles of clothing, footwear, and carrying cases. In 1933, it was still viewed as the "newest tailoring idea for men" replacing the button fly.

In 1914, Gideon Sundbach’s machines were turning out a few hundred feet of zippers a day. Today there are about 12 new zippers a year in the average American’s life and in Macon, Georgia, YKK (the largest zipper manufacturer in the world), produces 1,200 miles of zippers each day.

   In 1930, Wallace Hume Carothers, Julian Hill, and other researchers for the DuPont Company studied chains of molecules called polymers, in an attempt to find a substitute for silk. Pulling a heated rod from a beaker containing carbon- and alcohol-based molecules, they found the mixture stretched and, at room temperature, had a silky texture. This work culminated in the production of nylon marking the beginning of a new era in synthetic fibers.

Nylon was first used for fishing line, surgical sutures, and toothbrush bristles. DuPont touted its new fiber as being "as strong as steel, as fine as a spider’s web," and introduced nylon and nylon stockings to the American public at the New York World’s Fair in 1939. In fact, the "ny" in nylon is for New York. The first year on the market, DuPont sold 64 million pairs of stockings. That same year, nylon appeared in the movie,"The Wizard of Oz," where it was used to create the tornado that carried Dorothy to the Emerald City.

In 1942, nylon went to war in the form of parachutes and tents. Nylon stockings were the favorite gift of American soldiers to impress British women. Nylon stockings were scarce in America until the end of World War II, but returned with a vengeance. Shoppers crowded stores, and in San Francisco, one store was forced to halt stocking sales when it was mobbed by 10,000 anxious shoppers.

In 1959, Glen Raven Mills of North Carolina introduced panty hose, underpants and stockings all in one garment. With the addition of an opaque nylon top, this eliminated the need for multiple "foundation" garments. In 1965, they developed a seamless version that coincided with the introduction of the miniskirt.

Today, nylon is still used in all types of apparel and is the second most used synthetic fiber in the United States.

    Chester Greenwood was born in Farmington, Maine in 1858. A grammar school dropout, he invented earmuffs at the age of 15. While testing a new pair of ice skates, he grew frustrated at trying to protect his ears from the bitter cold. After wrapping his head in a scarf, which was too bulky and itchy, he made two ear-shaped loops from wire and asked his grandmother to sew fur on them. He patented an improved model with a steel band which held them in place and with Greenwood’s Champion Ear Protectors, he established Greenwood’s Ear Protector Factory. He made a fortune supplying Ear Protectors to U.S. soldiers during World War I. He went on to patent more than 10 other inventions. In 1977, Maine’s legislature declared December 21 "Chester Greenwood Day" to honor a native son and his contribution to cold weather protection.

   Today’s wire coat hanger was inspired by a clothes hook patented in 1869, by O. A. North of New Britain, Connecticut. Albert J. Parkhouse, an employee of Timberlake Wire and Novelty Company in Jackson, Michigan, created a coat hanger in 1903, in response to co-workers’ complaints of too few coat hooks. He bent a piece of wire into two ovals with the ends twisted together to form a hook. Timberlake patented his invention, but it is not known if he profited. Schuyler C. Hulett received a patent in 1932 for an improvement which involved cardboard tubes screwed onto the upper and lower portions to prevent wrinkles in freshly laundered clothes. Three years later Elmer D Rogers created a hanger with a tube on the lower bar which is still used today.

    Safety pins, remarkably similar to those that we use today, go back as far as the Bronze Age, but the modern day version was "reinvented" in 1825, and patented in 1849, by Walter Hunt of New York. He created its basic appearance in a little under 3 hours. Because he needed to pay off a $15 debt, he sold his patent rights for a lot less than the millions they were worth. The amount varies from $100 to $400 but this was not the first time he failed to hit the jackpot. In 1832, he invented the first lock-stitch sewing machine but didn’t apply for a patent because his daughter convinced him his invention would put seamstresses out of work. When he did apply for a patent in 1854, he found that a gentleman by the name of Elias Howe was already successful with a similar machine. Hunt also invented a repeating rifle, a nail making machine, a dry dock, a paper collar, and a metal bullet with an explosive charge.

    Post-it® notes may have been a God-send…literally. In the early 1970s, Art Fry was in search of a bookmark for his church hymnal that would neither fall out nor damage the hymnal. Fry noticed that a colleague at 3M, Dr. Spencer Silver, had developed an adhesive that was strong enough to stick to surfaces, but left no residue after removal. Fry took some of Dr. Silver’s adhesive and applied it along the edge of a piece of paper. His church hymnal problem was solved!

Fry soon realized that his "bookmark" had other potential functions when he used it to leave a note on a work file, and co-workers kept dropping by, seeking "bookmarks" for their offices. This "bookmark" was a new way to communicate and to organize. 3M Corporation crafted the name Post-it® note for Fry’s bookmarks and began production in the late 70s for commercial use.

In 1977, test-markets failed to show consumer interest. However in 1979, 3M implemented a massive consumer sampling strategy, and the Post-it® note took off. Today, we see Post-it® notes peppered across files, computers, desks, and doors in offices and homes throughout the country. From a church hymnal bookmark to an office and home essential, the Post-it® note has colored the way we work.

    Everyone has a secret. Bette Graham’s secret was the formula for Liquid Paper®, a trade secret that earned her millions of dollars.

Graham never intended to be an inventor; she wanted to be an artist. But shortly after World War II ended, she found herself divorced with a small child to support. She learned shorthand and typing and got a job as an executive secretary. An efficient employee who took pride in her work, Graham sought a better way to correct typing errors. She remembered that artists painted over their mistakes on canvas, so why couldn’t typists paint over their mistakes?

Graham put some tempera waterbase paint, colored to match the stationery she used, in a bottle and took her watercolor brush to the office. She used this to correct her typing mistakes… her boss never noticed. Soon another secretary saw the new invention and asked for some of the correcting fluid. Graham found a green bottle at home, wrote "Mistake Out" on a label, and gave it to her friend. Soon all the secretaries in the building were asking for some, too.

In 1956, Graham started the Mistake Out Company (later renamed Liquid Paper) from her North Dallas home. She turned her kitchen into a laboratory, mixing up an improved product with her electric mixer. Graham’s son, Michael Nesmith (later of The Monkees fame), and his friends filled bottles for her customers. But she made little money despite working nights and weekends to fill orders. One day an opportunity came in disguise. Graham made a mistake at work that she couldn’t correct, and her boss fired her. She now had time to devote to selling Liquid Paper, and business boomed.

By 1967, it had grown into a million dollar business. In 1968 she moved into her own plant and corporate headquarters, automated operations, and had 19 employees. That year she sold one million bottles. In 1975, Liquid Paper moved into a 35,000-sq. ft., international headquarters building in Dallas. The plant had equipment that could produce 500 bottles a minute. In 1976, the Liquid Paper Corporation turned out 25 million bottles. Its net earnings were $1.5 million. The company spent $1 million a year on advertising, alone.

Graham believed money to be a tool, not a solution to a problem. She set up two foundations to help women find new ways to earn a living. Graham died in 1980, six months after selling her corporation for $47.5 million.

   Before the computer, the typewriter may have been the most significant everyday business tool. Christopher Latham Sholes, a publisher/politician/ philosopher from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and his colleagues, Carlos Glidden and Samuel Soulé, invented the first practical typewriting machine in 1866. Five years, dozens of experiments, and two patents later, Sholes and his associates produced an improved model similar to today’s typewriters.

The type-bar system and the universal keyboard were the machine’s novelty, but the keys jammed easily. To solve the jamming problem, another business associate, James Densmore, suggested splitting up keys for letters commonly used together to slow down typing. This became today’s standard "QWERTY" keyboard.

Sholes lacked the patience required to market the new product and sold the rights to Densmore. He, in turn, convinced Philo Remington (of rifle fame) to market the device. The first "Sholes & Glidden Type Writer" was offered for sale in 1874 but was not an instant success. A few years later, improvements made by Remington engineers gave the machine its market appeal and sales skyrocketed.

   Though necessity may be the mother of invention, perhaps it is frustration that fuels the fire; or so it seemed for Lewis Edson Waterman. In 1883, Waterman was an insurance broker in New York, getting ready to sign one of his hottest contracts. In honor of the occasion, Waterman bought a new fountain pen that he considered far more stylish than a cumbersome dip pen and ink well. With the contract on the table and the pen in the client’s hand, the pen refused to write, and actually leaked onto the precious document. Horrified, Waterman raced back to his office for another contract, but a competing broker had closed the deal.

Determined to never again suffer such humiliation, Waterman began to make fountain pens in his brother’s workshop. Waterman used the capillarity principle which allowed air to induce a steady and even flow of ink. He christened his pen "the Regular," decorated it with wood accents, and obtained a patent for it in 1884. In his first year of operation, Waterman sold his hand-made pens out of the back of a cigar shop. He guaranteed the pens for five years and advertised in a trendy magazine, The Review of Review. The orders filtered in.

By 1899, Waterman opened a factory in Montreal and was offering a variety of designs. In 1901, upon Waterman’s death, his nephew, Frank D. Waterman took the business overseas and increased sales to 350,000 pens per year. The Treaty of Versailles was signed using a solid gold Waterman pen, a far cry from the day Lewis Edson Waterman lost his important contract due to a leaky fountain pen.

    Sally Fox, an entomologist working on natural pest control, took on the challenge of improving an ancient agricultural art. Fox successfully bred and marketed varieties of naturally coloured cotton she calls FoxFiber®.

The Peace Corps sent Fox to The Gambia in West Africa. There she observed the extensive misuse of pesticides which magnified her concern for the environment, encouraging her to develop safer methods of pest management. After returning home, Fox entered a graduate program at the University of California, and, in 1982, received her Masters degree in Integrated Pest Management.

Fox was introduced to coloured cotton while working for a cotton breeder, whose focus was developing pest-resistant strains of cotton. The peoples of Central and South America had spun these strains for centuries, but the fiber qualities were not sufficient for modern machine spinning. Here was Fox’s opportunity to combine her concern for the environment, work in her field of entomology, and practice her favorite pastime, spinning and weaving.

After many years of breeding the coloured cotton, Fox produced a commercial quality fiber. In 1989 she opened Natural Cotton Colours, Inc. Today Fox designs fabrics with her cotton and continues research.

   Put your feet up, lean back, and relax.

Most of us either own a recliner or know a friend or family member who does. The innovative chair design was invented during the spring of 1928, about the same time Dr. Fleming discovered penicillin, Mickey Mouse starred in the first talkie cartoon, "Steamboat Willie," and Lawrence Welk started intoxicating America with his champagne bubble band. Cousins Edward M. Knabusch and Edwin J. Shoemaker designed a wood slat folding chair from orange crates—the first La-Z-Boy recliner. A comfortable concept, the chair followed the contour of a person’s body, both sitting up and leaning back.

In 1927, the cousins abandoned secure jobs, joined forces, and invested in their own furniture business in Monroe, Michigan. Suddenly, Knabusch--a woodworker--turned marketer, and Shoemaker--a farmer--turned engineer. The locals thought they were crazy, but the Floral City Furniture Company flourished. A furniture buyer refused to purchase a wood slat porch chair and advised the inventors to upholster the chair and sell it as a year-round piece. They did, and the new chair swept the public off their feet. With financial help from friends and family, Knabusch and Shoemaker patented their inventions and registered their trademarks.

Business was brisk, but other manufacturers complained about Floral City Furniture Company being both a retailer and manufacturer. In 1941, the cousins separated the La-Z-Boy reclining chair factory from Floral City Furniture. With only a brief slow-down during World War II, the La-Z-Boy Chair Company continued to grow, adding new furniture pieces and changing designs to suit the times. La-Z-Boy workers now make more than 30,000 chairs and sofas each week—that’s 6,000 a day.

   As Hubert Cecil Booth, an Englishman, demonstrated his vacuuming device in a restaurant in 1901, two Americans introduced variations on the same theme. Corinne Dufour invented a device that sucked dust into a wet sponge. David E. Kenney’s huge machine was installed in the cellar and connected to a network of pipes leading to each room in the house. A corps of cleaners moved the machine from house to house.

In 1907, James Murray Spangler, a janitor in a Canton, Ohio department store, deduced that the carpet sweeper he used was the source of his cough. He tinkered with an old fan motor and attached it to a soap box stapled to a broom handle. Using a pillow case as a dust collector on the contraption, Spangler invented the first portable electric vacuum cleaner. He improved the basic model, received a patent in 1908, and formed the Electric Suction Sweeper Company. One of the first buyers was a cousin, whose husband, William H. Hoover, later became the president of the Hoover Company, with Spangler as superintendent. Hoover’s improvements resembled a bagpipe attached to a cake box, but they worked. Sluggish sales were given a kick by Hoover’s 10 day, free home trial, and eventually there was a Hoover® vacuum cleaner in nearly every home.

   In 1954, Swanson® responded to two post-war trends: the lure of time-saving modern appliances and the fascination with the latest innovation, the television. More than 10 million TV dinners were sold during the first year of Swanson’s national distribution. For $.98 per dinner, customers were able to choose among Salisbury steak, meatloaf, fried chicken, or turkey, served with potatoes and bright green peas; special desserts were added later. The food groups were displayed neatly in a divided metal tray. A representative tray was placed in the Smithsonian Institution in 1987 to commemorate the trays’ impact on American culture. Celebrity figures from Howdy Doody to President Eisenhower touted the dinners.

Swanson removed the name "TV Dinner," from the packaging in the 60s, and has since introduced lighter fare in microwave-safe trays. Swanson TV Dinners still remain in the public conscience as the dinner phenomenon of the 50s that grew up with television.

   The dust kicked up in Melville and Anna Bissell’s crockery shop and inspired Melville Bissell’s invention of the carpet sweeper. Originally developed to preserve Melville’s health by sweeping away the dust, the Bissells soon recognized the sweeper’s market potential.

Women neighbors of the Bissells, working out of their homes in Grand Rapids, Michigan, put together the inner workings and cases of the sweeper. They secured tufts of hog bristles with string, dipped the tufts into hot pitch, inserted the tufts into brush rollers, and trimmed them with scissors. Mrs. Bissell then gathered the parts in a clothes basket and took them back to a room above the store for assembly.

While production was underway, Mr. Bissell was on the road selling his new invention. To demonstrate, he threw a handful of dirt onto a carpet while his prospective customer watched the dirt disappear into the clanging contraption… a sale was made. The Bissell Carpet Sweeper® remains virtually unchanged today.

    In the 1920s, Americans used soap flakes to clean their laundry. The flakes performed poorly in hard water, leaving a ring in the washing machine, dulling colors, and turning whites gray. Procter & Gamble began an ambitious mission to change the way Americans washed their clothes. Researchers discovered two-part molecules which they called synthetic surfactants. Each part of the "miracle molecules" executed a specific function--one pulled grease and dirt from the clothes, while the other suspended dirt until it could be rinsed away. In 1933, this discovery was introduced in a detergent called "Dreft," but it could only handle lightly soiled jobs. The next goal was to create a detergent that could clean heavily soiled clothes. That detergent was Tide®.

Created in 1943, Tide detergent was the combination of synthetic surfactants and "builders." The builders helped the synthetic surfactants penetrate the clothes more deeply to attack greasy, difficult stains. Tide was introduced to test markets in October 1946 as the world’s first heavy-duty detergent. Consumer response was immediate and intense. Tide detergent outsold every other brand within weeks. It became so popular that store owners were forced to limit the quantity purchased per customer.

Tide detergent was improved 22 times during its first 21 years on the market, and Procter & Gable still strives for perfection. Each year, researchers duplicate the mineral content of water from all parts of the United States and wash 50,000 loads of laundry to test Tide detergent’s consistency and performance.

    In-line skates were created in the early 1700s when a Dutchman attached wooden spools to strips of wood and nailed them to his shoes. In 1863, an American developed the conventional rollerskate model, with the wheels positioned side by side, and it became the skate of choice.

In 1980, two Minnesota brothers, Scott and Brennan Olsen, discovered an older in-line skate in a sporting goods store and thought the design would be perfect for off-season hockey training. They improved the skate on their own and soon were manufacturing the first Rollerblade® in-line skates in their parents’ basement. Hockey players and alpine and Nordic skiers quickly caught on and were seen cruising the streets of Minnesota during the summer on their Rollerblade® skates.

Strategic marketing efforts thrust the brandname high into public awareness. Skating enthusiasts began using Rollerblade® as a generic term for all in-line skates, putting the trademark in jeopardy. Today 60 in-line skate manufacturers exist, but Rollerblade® is credited with introducing the first polyurethane boot and wheels, the first heel brakes, and the development of Active Brake Technology (ABT), which makes stopping easier to learn and to control. Rollerblade® has approximately 200 patents and 116 registered trademarks.

   In 1905, Dr. Samuel J. Crumbine, a member of the Kansas State Board of Health, set out to rid the state of a bumper crop of flies and combat the public’s indifference to the pests. While attending a Topeka softball game, Crumbine was inspired by the crowd’s chant of "swat the ball." The next issue of his Fly Bulletin bore the headline "SWAT THE FLY." This in turn inspired a school teacher, Frank H. Rose to construct a device from a yardstick and a piece of screen. The holes in the screen were essential because a fly can sense the air pressure of a solid object like a hand. Rose called his invention a "fly bat." Dr. Crumbine renamed it "fly swatter."

    Luther Burbank was born in Lancaster, Massachusetts on March 7, 1849. Despite receiving only an elementary education, Burbank developed more than 800 strains and varieties of plants, including 113 varieties of plums and prunes, 10 varieties of berries, 50 varieties of lilies, and the Freestone peach.

His Burbank potato was introduced in Ireland to combat the blight epidemic. Burbank sold the rights to the potato for $150, enough to travel to Santa Rosa, California. There he established a nursery, greenhouse, and experimental farm that have become famous throughout the world.

Plants were not patentable until 1930. Consequently, Burbank received his plant patents posthumously. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1986.

    Cecilia "Dee" Bennett is one of the best known hybridizers of plants—especially roses. Bennett was born Cecilia Lucy Daphne Panten in 1921 in Australia, and came to the United States as a young war bride in the 1940s. The miniature apricot rose, "Jean Kenneally," is one of her most popular varieties. Jean Kenneally, for whom Bennett named her rose, said she was "a genius in a man’s world."