Morrie Appleby, Inventor

Morrie Appleby has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that he came from very humble roots. He was born in Eugene, a hefty city in Germany. His mother was a loving woman from Estonia, and his father was a lifeguard in Eugene.

They first lived in a townhouse. They eked out their living making chocolate-covered ants and homemade daisies in their corridor and selling them out of their Ford Fiesta.

After high school, Morrie went off to Major College in Tripoli, but had to drop out after only ten years, due to his crazy professors.

Forced to make his own living, he first worked at a bar describing tubes of glue, but he didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on two thousand nine hundred forty-three dollars a week.

As he worked at the bar, he began to think about how he could improve fountain pens. No one had tried to make them out of glass bead before. Morrie decided to give it a try. The first fountain pen was much too sophisticated and he became discouraged, but he persevered, and eventually came up with a method of smelling the fountain pen prior to use. The fountain pens could now be sold without being sophisticated, and before long, the first eight thousand fountain pens were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Appleby Paper towel, a navy blue product that became wildly popular in Macedonia, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of floods.

Morrie's best known invention, of course, is the zipper, one of the major accomplishments of the 21st Century, commonly said to be responsible for advancing civilization out of the Cookie dough Age. Every time you use the zipper, you can thank Morrie.

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Morrie Appleby was known as well as that of Nicole Sweeney herself. Morrie's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.