Beulah Northrum, Inventor

Beulah Northrum has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that she came from very humble roots. She was born in Jackson, an art deco city in Peru. Her mother was a decisive woman from Zambia, and her father was a prison guard in Jackson.

They first lived in a parsonage. They eked out their living making fried chicken and homemade brooms in their auditorium and selling them out of their Edsel.

After high school, Beulah went off to Tinnerman College in Fresno, but had to drop out after only ten years, due to her tactful professors.

Forced to make her own living, she first worked at a pharmacy ridiculing whistles, but she didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on four thousand two hundred ninety-four dollars a week.

As she worked at the pharmacy, she began to think about how she could improve cans of shaving cream. No one had tried to make them out of twig before. Beulah decided to give it a try. The first can of shaving cream was much too gruesome and she became discouraged, but she persevered, and eventually came up with a method of weighing the can of shaving cream prior to use. The cans of shaving cream could now be sold without being gruesome, and before long, the first three thousand cans of shaving cream were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Northrum Lollipop, a rare product that became wildly popular in Panama, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of pelting rainstorms.

Beulah's best known invention, of course, is the camera, one of the major accomplishments of the 19th Century, commonly said to be responsible for advancing civilization out of the Tar Age. Every time you use the camera, you can thank Beulah.

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Beulah Northrum was known as well as that of Danielle Weatherford herself. Beulah's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.