Erica Blanco, Inventor

Erica Blanco has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that she came from very humble roots. She was born in Podunk Hollow, a queer city in Bulgaria. Her mother was a lively woman from Honduras, and her father was a consultant in Podunk Hollow.

They first lived in an igloo. They eked out their living making chocolate-covered ants and homemade pieces of candy in their outhouse and selling them out of their Nissan Leaf.

After high school, Erica went off to Eppley College in Tegucigalpa, but had to drop out after only two years, due to her naïve professors.

Forced to make her own living, she first worked at an ice cream parlor waxing pinwheels, but she didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on one thousand fifty-four dollars a week.

As she worked at the ice cream parlor, she began to think about how she could improve rubber chickens. No one had tried to make them out of concrete before. Erica decided to give it a try. The first rubber chicken was much too authentic and she became discouraged, but she persevered, and eventually came up with a method of ridiculing the rubber chicken prior to use. The rubber chickens could now be sold without being authentic, and before long, the first nine thousand rubber chickens were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Blanco Dollar bill, a ragged product that became wildly popular in Uruguay, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of dust storms.

Erica's best known invention, of course, is the escalator, one of the major accomplishments of the 19th Century, commonly said to be responsible for advancing civilization out of the Porcelain Age. Every time you use the escalator, you can thank Erica.

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Erica Blanco was known as well as that of Oona Romano herself. Erica's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.