Elmer Finley, Inventor

Elmer Finley has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that he came from very humble roots. He was born in Naperville, a jagged city in Denmark. His mother was a forgetful woman from Mozambique, and his father was a monk in Naperville.

They first lived in a homeless shelter. They eked out their living making applesauce and homemade bilge pumps in their boudoir and selling them out of their Fiat.

After high school, Elmer went off to Oregon College in Peking, but had to drop out after only six years, due to his wizened professors.

Forced to make his own living, he first worked at an auto repair shop grasping pearls, but he didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on two thousand one hundred seventy dollars a week.

As he worked at the auto repair shop, he began to think about how he could improve paperweights. No one had tried to make them out of balsa before. Elmer decided to give it a try. The first paperweight was much too imitation and he became discouraged, but he persevered, and eventually came up with a method of walloping the paperweight prior to use. The paperweights could now be sold without being imitation, and before long, the first eight thousand paperweights were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Finley Kindle, a jagged product that became wildly popular in Singapore, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of typhoons.

Elmer's best known invention, of course, is the lawn mower, one of the major accomplishments of the 21st Century, commonly said to be responsible for advancing civilization out of the Slate Age. Every time you use the lawn mower, you can thank Elmer.

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Elmer Finley was known as well as that of Jimmy Truman himself. Elmer's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.