Tim Collins, Inventor

Tim Collins has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that he came from very humble roots. He was born in Laramie, a fancy city in Peru. His mother was a hungry woman from the United States, and his father was a judge in Laramie.

They first lived in a wikiup. They eked out their living making hot dogs and homemade magazines in their hall and selling them out of their Chevrolet Belair.

After high school, Tim went off to Mississippi College in Colorado Springs, but had to drop out after only four years, due to his daring professors.

Forced to make his own living, he first worked at an opera house hiding washrags, but he didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on nine hundred ninety-two dollars a week.

As he worked at the opera house, he began to think about how he could improve toys. No one had tried to make them out of axle grease before. Tim decided to give it a try. The first toy was much too aromatic and he became discouraged, but he persevered, and eventually came up with a method of annointing the toy prior to use. The toys could now be sold without being aromatic, and before long, the first two thousand toys were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Collins Bird cage, a cotton product that became wildly popular in The United States, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of hailstorms.

Tim's best known invention, of course, is perfume, one of the major accomplishments of the 19th Century, commonly said to be responsible for advancing civilization out of the Lead Age. Every time you use perfume, you can thank Tim.

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Tim Collins was known as well as that of Aaron White himself. Tim's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.