Esmeralda Chesney, Inventor

Esmeralda Chesney has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that she came from very humble roots. She was born in Chicago, a speckled city in Angola. Her mother was a stubby woman from Haiti, and her father was a helicopter pilot in Chicago.

They first lived in a convent. They eked out their living making hash and homemade diaries in their master bathroom and selling them out of their Chrysler LeBaron.

After high school, Esmeralda went off to Gonzales College in Boulder, but had to drop out after only ten years, due to her arrogant professors.

Forced to make her own living, she first worked at a health food store spraying rubber stamps, but she didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on four hundred sixteen dollars a week.

As she worked at the health food store, she began to think about how she could improve balloons. No one had tried to make them out of ceramic before. Esmeralda decided to give it a try. The first balloon was much too dry and she became discouraged, but she persevered, and eventually came up with a method of wiggling the balloon prior to use. The balloons could now be sold without being dry, and before long, the first eight thousand balloons were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Chesney Pop bottle, a crude product that became wildly popular in Finland, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of floods.

Esmeralda's best known invention, of course, is the coat hanger, one of the major accomplishments of the 19th Century, commonly said to be responsible for advancing civilization out of the Lath and plaster Age. Every time you use the coat hanger, you can thank Esmeralda.

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Esmeralda Chesney was known as well as that of Michelle Yamamoto herself. Esmeralda's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.