Helmut O'Brien, Inventor

Helmut O'Brien has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that he came from very humble roots. He was born in Puebla, a sleek city in Cuba. His mother was a masculine woman from the United States, and his father was a cartographer in Puebla.

They first lived in an A-frame. They eked out their living making tofu and homemade chairs in their workshop and selling them out of their Ford Transit.

After high school, Helmut went off to South Dakota College in Carlsbad, but had to drop out after only one year, due to his articulate personality.

Forced to make his own living, he first worked at a laboratory burning saddles, but he didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on one thousand sixty-two dollars a week.

As he worked at the laboratory, he began to think about how he could improve cans of beer. No one had tried to make them out of masonry before. Helmut decided to give it a try. The first can of beer was much too hand-made and he became discouraged, but he persevered, and eventually came up with a method of chopping the can of beer prior to use. The cans of beer could now be sold without being hand-made, and before long, the first seven hundred cans of beer were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the O'Brien Towel, an ornate product that became wildly popular in South Sudan, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of hurricanes.

Helmut's best known invention, of course, is the Big Bang theory, one of the major accomplishments of the 21st Century, commonly said to be responsible for advancing civilization out of the Fairy dust Age. Every time you use the Big Bang theory, you can thank Helmut.

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Helmut O'Brien was known as well as that of Norm Darnell himself. Helmut's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.