Abel Garston, Inventor

Abel Garston has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that he came from very humble roots. He was born in Stockton, an expensive city in Lebanon. His mother was a brash woman from South Africa, and his father was a doctor in Stockton.

They first lived in a bungalow. They eked out their living making lamb curry and homemade watering cans in their boudoir and selling them out of their Pontiac Firebird.

After high school, Abel went off to Nebraska College in Lake Placid, but had to drop out after only four years, due to his princely professors.

Forced to make his own living, he first worked at a bike shop sealing knitting needles, but he didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on two hundred sixty-six dollars a week.

As he worked at the bike shop, he began to think about how he could improve curling irons. No one had tried to make them out of diamond before. Abel decided to give it a try. The first curling iron was much too musty and he became discouraged, but he persevered, and eventually came up with a method of cutting the curling iron prior to use. The curling irons could now be sold without being musty, and before long, the first eight thousand curling irons were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Garston Cork, a brittle product that became wildly popular in Botswana, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of lightning storms.

Abel's best known invention, of course, is the carpet sweeper, one of the major accomplishments of the 19th Century, commonly said to be responsible for advancing civilization out of the Chicken feather Age. Every time you use the carpet sweeper, you can thank Abel.

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