Xaviera Case, Inventor

Xaviera Case has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that she came from very humble roots. She was born in Madison, a clean city in Mozambique. Her mother was a self-confident woman from Nicaragua, and her father was a florist in Madison.

They first lived in a mud hut. They eked out their living making fried eggs and homemade mirrors in their master bathroom and selling them out of their Jeep.

After high school, Xaviera went off to Rand College in Spokane, but had to drop out after only one year, due to her diabolical professors.

Forced to make her own living, she first worked at a butcher shop hammering hacksaws, but she didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on two thousand forty dollars a week.

As she worked at the butcher shop, she began to think about how she could improve hair brushes. No one had tried to make them out of leaf and twig before. Xaviera decided to give it a try. The first hair brush was much too delicate and she became discouraged, but she persevered, and eventually came up with a method of washing the hair brush prior to use. The hair brushes could now be sold without being delicate, and before long, the first two thousand hair brushes were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Case Feather, a wet product that became wildly popular in Saudi Arabia, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of humid days.

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

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Xaviera Case was known as well as that of Rebecca Ferguson herself. Xaviera's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.