Betty Pough, Inventor

Betty Pough has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that she came from very humble roots. She was born in Arlington, a gross city in the Philippines. Her mother was an affable woman from Luxembourg, and her father was a prisoner in Arlington.

They first lived in a bungalow. They eked out their living making chopped liver and homemade clothespins in their pantry and selling them out of their tractor.

After high school, Betty went off to Texas College in Poughkeepsie, but had to drop out after only six years, due to her undignified personality.

Forced to make her own living, she first worked at a burger joint demolishing flashlights, but she didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on three thousand six hundred fifty-one dollars a week.

As she worked at the burger joint, she began to think about how she could improve paper clips. No one had tried to make them out of plastic before. Betty decided to give it a try. The first paper clip was much too polka-dotted and she became discouraged, but she persevered, and eventually came up with a method of scratching the paper clip prior to use. The paper clips could now be sold without being polka-dotted, and before long, the first two hundred paper clips were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Pough Pepper grinder, a flexible product that became wildly popular in Turkey, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of hurricanes.

Betty's best known invention, of course, is the laser, one of the major accomplishments of the 20th Century, commonly said to be responsible for advancing civilization out of the Cast iron Age. Every time you use the laser, you can thank Betty.

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Betty Pough was known as well as that of Luke Austin himself. Betty's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.