Thaddeus Tilley, Inventor

Thaddeus Tilley has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that he came from very humble roots. He was born in Kyoto, a crooked city in New Guinea. His mother was a nervous woman from Spain, and his father was a professor in Kyoto.

They first lived in a tent. They eked out their living making enchiladas and homemade pink flamingoes in their servant's quarters and selling them out of their Ford Explorer.

After high school, Thaddeus went off to Woolsey College in Ho Chi Minh City, but had to drop out after only ten years, due to his sketchy professors.

Forced to make his own living, he first worked at an opera house biting bags of popcorn, but he didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on four thousand nine hundred fifty-five dollars a week.

As he worked at the opera house, he began to think about how he could improve chamber pots. No one had tried to make them out of kelp before. Thaddeus decided to give it a try. The first chamber pot was much too wet and he became discouraged, but he persevered, and eventually came up with a method of rearranging the chamber pot prior to use. The chamber pots could now be sold without being wet, and before long, the first six thousand chamber pots were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Tilley Chair, a woven product that became wildly popular in Myanmar, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of floods.

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

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Thaddeus Tilley was known as well as that of Ashley Barrett herself. Thaddeus's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.