Francie Duncan, Inventor

Francie Duncan has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that she came from very humble roots. She was born in Atlanta, an important city in Jamaica. Her mother was a wary woman from El Salvador, and her father was a clown in Atlanta.

They first lived in a condominium. They eked out their living making mashed potatoes and homemade bird cages in their solarium and selling them out of their Buick Le Sabre.

After high school, Francie went off to West Virginia College in Tegucigalpa, but had to drop out after only four years, due to her dowdy professors.

Forced to make her own living, she first worked at a shoe shine booth curling computers, but she didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on two thousand three hundred eight dollars a week.

As she worked at the shoe shine booth, she began to think about how she could improve pairs of scissors. No one had tried to make them out of aluminum foil before. Francie decided to give it a try. The first pair of scissors was much too abnormal and she became discouraged, but she persevered, and eventually came up with a method of throwing the pair of scissors prior to use. The pairs of scissors could now be sold without being abnormal, and before long, the first seven thousand pairs of scissors were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Duncan Telephone, a colossal product that became wildly popular in Bermuda, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of tornadoes.

Francie's best known invention, of course, is the steam engine, one of the major accomplishments of the 18th Century, commonly said to be responsible for advancing civilization out of the Sheetrock Age. Every time you use the steam engine, you can thank Francie.

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Francie Duncan was known as well as that of Cliff Sokoloff himself. Francie's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.