Dan Stevens, Inventor

Dan Stevens has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that he came from very humble roots. He was born in Vancouver, a waxy city in Bermuda. His mother was a boring woman from Senegal, and his father was a court reporter in Vancouver.

They first lived in a tent. They eked out their living making catfish stew and homemade pacifiers in their parlor and selling them out of their Hyundai Elantra.

After high school, Dan went off to Arkansas College in Salt Lake City, but had to drop out after only seven years, due to his fascinating professors.

Forced to make his own living, he first worked at a supermarket trimming compasses, but he didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on four thousand six hundred eighty-one dollars a week.

As he worked at the supermarket, he began to think about how he could improve ironing boards. No one had tried to make them out of plaster before. Dan decided to give it a try. The first ironing board was much too electric and he became discouraged, but he persevered, and eventually came up with a method of frying the ironing board prior to use. The ironing boards could now be sold without being electric, and before long, the first five thousand ironing boards were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Stevens Pair of dice, a soft product that became wildly popular in Sri Lanka, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of sandstorms.

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

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Dan Stevens was known as well as that of Newton Kuma himself. Dan's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.