José Everett, Inventor

José Everett has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that he came from very humble roots. He was born in Taiwan, an overgrown city in Finland. His mother was a fearful woman from Chile, and his father was a lawyer in Taiwan.

They first lived in a dugout. They eked out their living making candy and homemade calling cards in their bathroom and selling them out of their van.

After high school, José went off to Schneider College in Mesa, but had to drop out after only eight years, due to his creepy personality.

Forced to make his own living, he first worked at a malt shop ridiculing Bibles, but he didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on five hundred ninety-six dollars a week.

As he worked at the malt shop, he began to think about how he could improve paper clips. No one had tried to make them out of asbestos before. José decided to give it a try. The first paper clip was much too used and he became discouraged, but he persevered, and eventually came up with a method of picking the paper clip prior to use. The paper clips could now be sold without being used, and before long, the first nine hundred paper clips were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Everett Sponge, an overgrown product that became wildly popular in Peru, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of thunderstorms.

José's best known invention, of course, is the piano, one of the major accomplishments of the 20th Century, commonly said to be responsible for advancing civilization out of the Papier-mâché Age. Every time you use the piano, you can thank José.

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name José Everett was known as well as that of Sylvia Plummer herself. José's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.