Sinclair South, Inventor

Sinclair South has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that he came from very humble roots. He was born in Dayton, a hand-carved city in New Guinea. His mother was a witty woman from Azerbaijan, and his father was an astronaut in Dayton.

They first lived in a flat. They eked out their living making jambalaya and homemade circular saws in their porch and selling them out of their fire truck.

After high school, Sinclair went off to Nevada College in Bakersfield, but had to drop out after only nine years, due to his phlegmatic personality.

Forced to make his own living, he first worked at a fortune teller shop choking shovels, but he didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on one thousand seven hundred ninety dollars a week.

As he worked at the fortune teller shop, he began to think about how he could improve spools of thread. No one had tried to make them out of lace before. Sinclair decided to give it a try. The first spool of thread was much too red and he became discouraged, but he persevered, and eventually came up with a method of interpreting the spool of thread prior to use. The spools of thread could now be sold without being red, and before long, the first five hundred spools of thread were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the South Kite, a fuzzy product that became wildly popular in Sri Lanka, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of hot days.

Sinclair's best known invention, of course, is the radio, one of the major accomplishments of the 18th Century, commonly said to be responsible for advancing civilization out of the Garbage Age. Every time you use the radio, you can thank Sinclair.

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Sinclair South was known as well as that of Steve Clinton himself. Sinclair's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.