Vince Dixon, Inventor

Vince Dixon has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that he came from very humble roots. He was born in Manchester, a fancy city in Spain. His mother was a zany woman from Ireland, and his father was a singer in Manchester.

They first lived in a mobile home. They eked out their living making hash and homemade statues in their front porch and selling them out of their snowmobile.

After high school, Vince went off to Vermont College in Chesapeake, but had to drop out after only eight years, due to his atrocious professors.

Forced to make his own living, he first worked at a perfumery boiling accordions, but he didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on two thousand six hundred thirty-two dollars a week.

As he worked at the perfumery, he began to think about how he could improve duffel bags. No one had tried to make them out of axle grease before. Vince decided to give it a try. The first duffel bag was much too flexible and he became discouraged, but he persevered, and eventually came up with a method of jumping on the duffel bag prior to use. The duffel bags could now be sold without being flexible, and before long, the first nine thousand duffel bags were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Dixon Beach ball, a thick product that became wildly popular in Nepal, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of rainbows.

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

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Vince Dixon was known as well as that of Jürgen Slater himself. Vince's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.