Lawrence Hopper, Inventor

Lawrence Hopper has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that he came from very humble roots. He was born in Bangkok, a gooey city in Vietnam. His mother was a desperate woman from Finland, and his father was a burglar in Bangkok.

They first lived in a retreat. They eked out their living making bread and butter and homemade clipboards in their basement and selling them out of their Chevy Impala.

After high school, Lawrence went off to Tsutsui College in Rotterdam, but had to drop out after only eight years, due to his heavyset professors.

Forced to make his own living, he first worked at an ad agency shortening crutches, but he didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on two thousand six hundred ninety-one dollars a week.

As he worked at the ad agency, he began to think about how he could improve padlocks. No one had tried to make them out of denim before. Lawrence decided to give it a try. The first padlock was much too smooth and he became discouraged, but he persevered, and eventually came up with a method of wiping the padlock prior to use. The padlocks could now be sold without being smooth, and before long, the first eight thousand padlocks were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Hopper Cork, a sophisticated product that became wildly popular in Albania, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of hailstorms.

Lawrence's best known invention, of course, is the cash register, one of the major accomplishments of the 17th Century, commonly said to be responsible for advancing civilization out of the Cork Age. Every time you use the cash register, you can thank Lawrence.

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Lawrence Hopper was known as well as that of Peg Sinclair herself. Lawrence's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.