Antonia Okara, Inventor

Antonia Okara has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that she came from very humble roots. She was born in San Angelo, an original city in the United States. Her mother was a stern woman from Bolivia, and her father was a mayor in San Angelo.

They first lived in a farmhouse. They eked out their living making cotton candy and homemade bugles in their basement and selling them out of their Volkswagon Beetle.

After high school, Antonia went off to Mississippi College in Toronto, but had to drop out after only four years, due to her proud professors.

Forced to make her own living, she first worked at a novelty shop lengthening horseshoes, but she didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on one thousand eight hundred twenty-nine dollars a week.

As she worked at the novelty shop, she began to think about how she could improve pencil sharpeners. No one had tried to make them out of cast iron before. Antonia decided to give it a try. The first pencil sharpener was much too fluffy and she became discouraged, but she persevered, and eventually came up with a method of unfolding the pencil sharpener prior to use. The pencil sharpeners could now be sold without being fluffy, and before long, the first eight thousand pencil sharpeners were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Okara Key ring, a crisp product that became wildly popular in Serbia, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of bits of precipitation.

Antonia'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 Concrete Age. Every time you use the zipper, you can thank Antonia.

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Antonia Okara was known as well as that of Lars Hopkins himself. Antonia's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.