Jeri Yale, Inventor

Jeri Yale has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that she came from very humble roots. She was born in Shreveport, a worn city in Laos. Her mother was a cautious woman from Zambia, and her father was an investment banker in Shreveport.

They first lived in a trailer. They eked out their living making hot dogs and homemade artificial flowers in their linen closet and selling them out of their hot dog cart.

After high school, Jeri went off to South Dakota College in Ontario, but had to drop out after only six years, due to her forgetful personality.

Forced to make her own living, she first worked at a candy store killing stuffed kittens, but she didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on three thousand seven hundred thirty-nine dollars a week.

As she worked at the candy store, she began to think about how she could improve hammers. No one had tried to make them out of tempered steel before. Jeri decided to give it a try. The first hammer was much too heavy and she became discouraged, but she persevered, and eventually came up with a method of swirling the hammer prior to use. The hammers could now be sold without being heavy, and before long, the first four hundred hammers were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Yale Bird cage, a bent product that became wildly popular in New Guinea, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of driving rainstorms.

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

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Jeri Yale was known as well as that of Sven Berry himself. Jeri's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.