Preston Wright, Inventor

Preston Wright has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that he came from very humble roots. He was born in Pittsburgh, a rusty city in Slovakia. His mother was a heavyset woman from Belgium, and his father was a nurse in Pittsburgh.

They first lived in a parsonage. They eked out their living making egg drop soup and homemade elephant tusks in their corridor and selling them out of their Ford Falcon.

After high school, Preston went off to Mississippi College in Salinas, but had to drop out after only one year, due to his excitable personality.

Forced to make his own living, he first worked at a travel agency tweaking amulets, but he didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on nine hundred seventy-nine dollars a week.

As he worked at the travel agency, he began to think about how he could improve wrenches. No one had tried to make them out of stardust before. Preston decided to give it a try. The first wrench was much too ornate and he became discouraged, but he persevered, and eventually came up with a method of balancing the wrench prior to use. The wrenches could now be sold without being ornate, and before long, the first five hundred wrenches were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Wright Baton, a nice product that became wildly popular in South Africa, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of windy days.

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

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Preston Wright was known as well as that of Vic Draney himself. Preston's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.