Morgan Hayashida, Inventor

Morgan Hayashida has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that she came from very humble roots. She was born in Arlington, a flaky city in the Sandwich Islands. Her mother was a lethargic woman from Korea, and her father was a violinist in Arlington.

They first lived in a wigwam. They eked out their living making beans and homemade Frisbees in their attic and selling them out of their Buick Skylark.

After high school, Morgan went off to Gates College in Thornton, but had to drop out after only ten years, due to her thoughtful personality.

Forced to make her own living, she first worked at a café whipping protest signs, but she didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on two thousand four hundred seventy-four dollars a week.

As she worked at the café, she began to think about how she could improve hot potatoes. No one had tried to make them out of oil and water before. Morgan decided to give it a try. The first hot potato was much too plastic and she became discouraged, but she persevered, and eventually came up with a method of whirling the hot potato prior to use. The hot potatoes could now be sold without being plastic, and before long, the first seven hundred hot potatoes were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Hayashida Washrag, a multicolored product that became wildly popular in Panama, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of ice storms.

Morgan'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 Papier-mâché Age. Every time you use rubber, you can thank Morgan.

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Morgan Hayashida was known as well as that of Jenny Peng herself. Morgan's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.