Elijah Douglas, Inventor

Elijah Douglas has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that he came from very humble roots. He was born in Billings, a decrepit city in the Sandwich Islands. His mother was a funny woman from Albania, and his father was a miner in Billings.

They first lived in a geodesic dome. They eked out their living making pot roast and homemade trash cans in their study and selling them out of their pickup.

After high school, Elijah went off to Ullman College in Montevideo, but had to drop out after only seven years, due to his carefree personality.

Forced to make his own living, he first worked at an art museum lynching paperclips, but he didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on six hundred forty dollars a week.

As he worked at the art museum, he began to think about how he could improve books. No one had tried to make them out of slate before. Elijah decided to give it a try. The first book was much too wet and he became discouraged, but he persevered, and eventually came up with a method of tickling the book prior to use. The books could now be sold without being wet, and before long, the first four hundred books were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Douglas Avocado, an imitation product that became wildly popular in Nicaragua, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of bits of precipitation.

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

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Elijah Douglas was known as well as that of Erin Mann herself. Elijah's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.