Ellen Winger, Inventor

Ellen Winger has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that she came from very humble roots. She was born in Santa Fe, a crisp city in Guatemala. Her mother was a bellicose woman from Serbia, and her father was a magician in Santa Fe.

They first lived in a house. They eked out their living making dirty rice and homemade boxes in their guest room and selling them out of their scooter.

After high school, Ellen went off to Oklahoma College in Hannover, but had to drop out after only eight years, due to her bizarre professors.

Forced to make her own living, she first worked at a fabric store getting mousetraps, but she didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on two thousand two hundred ninety-five dollars a week.

As she worked at the fabric store, she began to think about how she could improve pairs of pliers. No one had tried to make them out of straw before. Ellen decided to give it a try. The first pair of pliers was much too thick and she became discouraged, but she persevered, and eventually came up with a method of cleaning the pair of pliers prior to use. The pairs of pliers could now be sold without being thick, and before long, the first six thousand pairs of pliers were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Winger Helmholz resonator, a ridged product that became wildly popular in Zambia, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of hot, sunny days.

Ellen's best known invention, of course, is photography, one of the major accomplishments of the 20th Century, commonly said to be responsible for advancing civilization out of the Wattle and daub Age. Every time you use photography, you can thank Ellen.

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Ellen Winger was known as well as that of Jared Dion himself. Ellen's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.