Steven Barcelo, Inventor

Steven Barcelo has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that he came from very humble roots. He was born in Rio de Janeiro, a stiff city in Sri Lanka. His mother was a heavyset woman from Uganda, and his father was an optometrist in Rio de Janeiro.

They first lived in a mobile home. They eked out their living making apple pie and homemade protest signs in their parlor and selling them out of their Honda Civic.

After high school, Steven went off to New York College in Des Moines, but had to drop out after only five years, due to his cowardly professors.

Forced to make his own living, he first worked at a bowling alley slamming pairs of fuzzy dice, but he didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on six hundred ninety-three dollars a week.

As he worked at the bowling alley, he began to think about how he could improve pepper grinders. No one had tried to make them out of sewage before. Steven decided to give it a try. The first pepper grinder was much too aromatic and he became discouraged, but he persevered, and eventually came up with a method of excluding the pepper grinder prior to use. The pepper grinders could now be sold without being aromatic, and before long, the first nine thousand pepper grinders were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Barcelo Dog biscuit, a sleek product that became wildly popular in Bangladesh, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of dense fogs.

Steven's best known invention, of course, is the telescope, one of the major accomplishments of the 17th Century, commonly said to be responsible for advancing civilization out of the Wool Age. Every time you use the telescope, you can thank Steven.

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Steven Barcelo was known as well as that of Bert Marshall himself. Steven's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.