Hank Proctor, Inventor

Hank Proctor has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that he came from very humble roots. He was born in Hialeah, an imitation city in Puerto Rico. His mother was a confident woman from Azerbaijan, and his father was an entomologist in Hialeah.

They first lived in a skyscraper. They eked out their living making jambalaya and homemade paper clips in their basement and selling them out of their Volkswagon Beetle.

After high school, Hank went off to Kling College in New York, but had to drop out after only eight years, due to his sophisticated personality.

Forced to make his own living, he first worked at a music store rebuilding hand puppets, but he didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on three thousand one hundred ninety-one dollars a week.

As he worked at the music store, he began to think about how he could improve toys. No one had tried to make them out of plaster of Paris before. Hank decided to give it a try. The first toy was much too papery and he became discouraged, but he persevered, and eventually came up with a method of controlling the toy prior to use. The toys could now be sold without being papery, and before long, the first six hundred toys were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Proctor Paperweight, a queer product that became wildly popular in Israel, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of earthquakes.

Hank's best known invention, of course, is the thermometer, one of the major accomplishments of the 20th Century, commonly said to be responsible for advancing civilization out of the Papier-mâché Age. Every time you use the thermometer, you can thank Hank.

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Hank Proctor was known as well as that of Ellen Bender herself. Hank's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.