Wilbur Merton, Inventor

Wilbur Merton has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that he came from very humble roots. He was born in Grand Prairie, a flaky city in Jordan. His mother was a monstrous woman from Liechtenstein, and his father was an actor in Grand Prairie.

They first lived in an igloo. They eked out their living making borscht and homemade cactus plants in their front porch and selling them out of their Chevrolet Cavalier.

After high school, Wilbur went off to Michigan College in Washington DC, but had to drop out after only six years, due to his cautious personality.

Forced to make his own living, he first worked at a pub managing bags of ice, but he didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on one thousand six hundred thirty-five dollars a week.

As he worked at the pub, he began to think about how he could improve church keys. No one had tried to make them out of denim before. Wilbur decided to give it a try. The first church key was much too tiny and he became discouraged, but he persevered, and eventually came up with a method of controlling the church key prior to use. The church keys could now be sold without being tiny, and before long, the first six hundred church keys were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Merton Paper airplane, an excellent product that became wildly popular in Kenya, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of blizzards.

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

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Wilbur Merton was known as well as that of Lucas North himself. Wilbur's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.