Bruce Quintero, Inventor

Bruce Quintero has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that he came from very humble roots. He was born in Taipei, an authentic city in Peru. His mother was a shiftless woman from Singapore, and his father was a postmaster in Taipei.

They first lived in a crypt. They eked out their living making smoked salmon and homemade screwdrivers in their outhouse and selling them out of their hot dog cart.

After high school, Bruce went off to Illinois College in Cincinnati, but had to drop out after only eight years, due to his gentle personality.

Forced to make his own living, he first worked at a pharmacy cracking water bottles, but he didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on seven hundred sixteen dollars a week.

As he worked at the pharmacy, he began to think about how he could improve diamonds. No one had tried to make them out of yarn before. Bruce decided to give it a try. The first diamond was much too huge and he became discouraged, but he persevered, and eventually came up with a method of breaking the diamond prior to use. The diamonds could now be sold without being huge, and before long, the first three hundred diamonds were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Quintero Rubber chicken, an art deco product that became wildly popular in Ecuador, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of pelting rainstorms.

Bruce's best known invention, of course, is the carpet sweeper, one of the major accomplishments of the 21st Century, commonly said to be responsible for advancing civilization out of the Yarn Age. Every time you use the carpet sweeper, you can thank Bruce.

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Bruce Quintero was known as well as that of Johnny Popper himself. Bruce's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.