Bronk Minturn, Inventor

Bronk Minturn has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that he came from very humble roots. He was born in Taiwan, a polished city in Cambodia. His mother was a jaunty woman from Mozambique, and his father was a miner in Taiwan.

They first lived in a box. They eked out their living making refried beans and homemade microphones in their library and selling them out of their delivery truck.

After high school, Bronk went off to Kansas College in Fargo, but had to drop out after only six years, due to his disagreeable professors.

Forced to make his own living, he first worked at a pharmacy brushing biscuits, but he didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on four thousand two hundred seventy-eight dollars a week.

As he worked at the pharmacy, he began to think about how he could improve firecrackers. No one had tried to make them out of carbon fiber before. Bronk decided to give it a try. The first firecracker was much too heavy and he became discouraged, but he persevered, and eventually came up with a method of copying the firecracker prior to use. The firecrackers could now be sold without being heavy, and before long, the first six thousand firecrackers were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Minturn Tube of glue, a weird product that became wildly popular in Ecuador, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of sleet storms.

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

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Bronk Minturn was known as well as that of Brad Vogel himself. Bronk's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.