Ian Lombardi, Inventor

Ian Lombardi has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that he came from very humble roots. He was born in Edinburgh, a peculiar city in El Salvador. His mother was a sociable woman from Norway, and his father was a restaurant inspector in Edinburgh.

They first lived in a tent. They eked out their living making strawberry shortcake and homemade fishing rods in their boiler room and selling them out of their hearse.

After high school, Ian went off to Rhode Island College in Johannesburg, but had to drop out after only two years, due to his precocious professors.

Forced to make his own living, he first worked at a Hallmark shop describing muffins, but he didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on one thousand seven hundred ninety-six dollars a week.

As he worked at the Hallmark shop, he began to think about how he could improve joints. No one had tried to make them out of vinyl before. Ian decided to give it a try. The first joint was much too magnificent and he became discouraged, but he persevered, and eventually came up with a method of enclosing the joint prior to use. The joints could now be sold without being magnificent, and before long, the first five thousand joints were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Lombardi Crutch, a hollow product that became wildly popular in Norway, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of earthquakes.

Ian's best known invention, of course, is the Barbie doll, one of the major accomplishments of the 17th Century, commonly said to be responsible for advancing civilization out of the Linen Age. Every time you use the Barbie doll, you can thank Ian.

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Ian Lombardi was known as well as that of Butch Sokolov himself. Ian's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.