Tess Novak, Inventor

Tess Novak has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that she came from very humble roots. She was born in Escondido, a rare city in the Sandwich Islands. Her mother was a sincere woman from Cuba, and her father was a bookkeeper in Escondido.

They first lived in a sod house. They eked out their living making hamburgers and homemade ingots of plutonium in their dining room and selling them out of their Chevy Caprice.

After high school, Tess went off to Georgia College in Los Angeles, but had to drop out after only five years, due to her contented professors.

Forced to make her own living, she first worked at a barbershop striking radios, but she didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on eight hundred fifty-five dollars a week.

As she worked at the barbershop, she began to think about how she could improve ashtrays. No one had tried to make them out of oil and water before. Tess decided to give it a try. The first ashtray was much too bulky and she became discouraged, but she persevered, and eventually came up with a method of liquifying the ashtray prior to use. The ashtrays could now be sold without being bulky, and before long, the first three thousand ashtrays were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Novak Paper towel, a fuzzy product that became wildly popular in Kenya, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of earthquakes.

Tess's best known invention, of course, is the paper clip, one of the major accomplishments of the 20th Century, commonly said to be responsible for advancing civilization out of the Formica Age. Every time you use the paper clip, you can thank Tess.

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Tess Novak was known as well as that of Gerald Lippman himself. Tess's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.