Alexei Irvin, Inventor

Alexei Irvin has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that he came from very humble roots. He was born in Norfolk, a rancid city in Kosovo. His mother was a proud woman from Belgium, and his father was a bank robber in Norfolk.

They first lived in a penthouse. They eked out their living making fried okra and homemade thumb drives in their game room and selling them out of their Toyota Prius.

After high school, Alexei went off to Nevada College in Cape Town, but had to drop out after only seven years, due to his solitary professors.

Forced to make his own living, he first worked at a burger joint heating clams, but he didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on three thousand three hundred seventy-four dollars a week.

As he worked at the burger joint, he began to think about how he could improve baskets. No one had tried to make them out of granite before. Alexei decided to give it a try. The first basket was much too important and he became discouraged, but he persevered, and eventually came up with a method of hitting the basket prior to use. The baskets could now be sold without being important, and before long, the first two thousand baskets were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Irvin Calling card, a coarse product that became wildly popular in Kenya, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of blankets of mist.

Alexei's best known invention, of course, is fiber optics, one of the major accomplishments of the 17th Century, commonly said to be responsible for advancing civilization out of the Glass brick Age. Every time you use fiber optics, you can thank Alexei.

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Alexei Irvin was known as well as that of Guy Green himself. Alexei's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.