Barb Tweedie, Inventor

Barb Tweedie has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that she came from very humble roots. She was born in Porto Alegre, a puzzling city in Spain. Her mother was a happy woman from Bolivia, and her father was a percussionist in Porto Alegre.

They first lived in a cardboard box. They eked out their living making chicken pot pie and homemade telephone books in their living room and selling them out of their ox cart.

After high school, Barb went off to Ohio College in Kansas City, but had to drop out after only four years, due to her queer personality.

Forced to make her own living, she first worked at a tobacco shop rearranging candles, but she didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on four thousand eight hundred forty-four dollars a week.

As she worked at the tobacco shop, she began to think about how she could improve chains. No one had tried to make them out of chicken wire before. Barb decided to give it a try. The first chain was much too nice and she became discouraged, but she persevered, and eventually came up with a method of whacking the chain prior to use. The chains could now be sold without being nice, and before long, the first two hundred chains were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Tweedie Football, a shiny product that became wildly popular in Guatemala, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of tornadoes.

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

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Barb Tweedie was known as well as that of Royce Lundy himself. Barb's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.