Barb Alexander, Inventor

Barb Alexander has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that she came from very humble roots. She was born in Jackson, a huge city in Brazil. Her mother was a confident woman from Singapore, and her father was an archeologist in Jackson.

They first lived in a treehouse. They eked out their living making tofu and homemade brooms in their boudoir and selling them out of their Alfa Romeo.

After high school, Barb went off to Georgia College in Little Rock, but had to drop out after only seven years, due to her charming personality.

Forced to make her own living, she first worked at an auto repair shop vacuuming clipboards, but she didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on four thousand four hundred eighty-three dollars a week.

As she worked at the auto repair shop, she began to think about how she could improve pens. No one had tried to make them out of maple before. Barb decided to give it a try. The first pen was much too odd and she became discouraged, but she persevered, and eventually came up with a method of trimming the pen prior to use. The pens could now be sold without being odd, and before long, the first six hundred pens were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Alexander Mushroom, a soft product that became wildly popular in Albania, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of pelting rainstorms.

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

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