Susanne Akiyama, Inventor

Susanne Akiyama has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that she came from very humble roots. She was born in Toledo, a colossal city in Estonia. Her mother was a corpulent woman from Latvia, and her father was a journalist in Toledo.

They first lived in a treehouse. They eked out their living making chicken soup and homemade hair brushes in their game room and selling them out of their moped.

After high school, Susanne went off to Minnesota College in Corona, but had to drop out after only four years, due to her haughty professors.

Forced to make her own living, she first worked at a convenience store reinforcing cigarette lighters, but she didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on eight hundred eighty-seven dollars a week.

As she worked at the convenience store, she began to think about how she could improve contracts. No one had tried to make them out of bronze before. Susanne decided to give it a try. The first contract was much too damp and she became discouraged, but she persevered, and eventually came up with a method of piercing the contract prior to use. The contracts could now be sold without being damp, and before long, the first five thousand contracts were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Akiyama Bat, a miniature product that became wildly popular in Pakistan, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of humid days.

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

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Susanne Akiyama was known as well as that of Oliver Northrum himself. Susanne's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.