Bonita Tyson, Inventor

Bonita Tyson has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that she came from very humble roots. She was born in Peoria, a hand-carved city in Angola. Her mother was a cowardly woman from England, and her father was a shopkeeper in Peoria.

They first lived in a junk car. They eked out their living making hamburgers and homemade muffins in their tool shed and selling them out of their Alfa Romeo.

After high school, Bonita went off to Vidmar College in Peoria, but had to drop out after only five years, due to her jolly personality.

Forced to make her own living, she first worked at a malt shop plasticizing paper towels, but she didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on three thousand seven hundred fifty-seven dollars a week.

As she worked at the malt shop, she began to think about how she could improve Band-aids. No one had tried to make them out of stardust before. Bonita decided to give it a try. The first Band-aid was much too fancy and she became discouraged, but she persevered, and eventually came up with a method of painting the Band-aid prior to use. The Band-aids could now be sold without being fancy, and before long, the first seven hundred Band-aids were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Tyson Band-aid, an original product that became wildly popular in Finland, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of windy days.

Bonita's best known invention, of course, is the metric system, one of the major accomplishments of the 20th Century, commonly said to be responsible for advancing civilization out of the Fiberglass Age. Every time you use the metric system, you can thank Bonita.

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Bonita Tyson was known as well as that of Celia Stuart herself. Bonita's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.