LITTLE ACCIDENTS

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXVI, Issue 3449, 24 November 1932, Page 7

LITTLE ACCIDENTS

LEAD TO FORTUNES. Everyone dreams of the happy accident which may lead on to fortune, such as the trifling- affair of a broken razor, which gave King Camp Gillette the idea of the safety blade and made him a millionaire. His recent death recalls similar fortunes which have come from chance ideas, and the rise of penniless people who have had the courage and faith to follow up their discovery. The idea may come in the bathroom, in the garden, in the ■office; or the housewive, irritated by some clumsy device in the kitchen, may stumble upon a secret carrying ( a six-figure bank balance. Shelling a peanut which tore his finger, left Tom Huston, the Columbus, Georgia, millionaire, so exasperated that he immediately evolved a mechanical sheller. He made power machines which roasted the nuts. And from that scratch there grew a fortune, for, within four years, he became a millionaire. A chance thought, although it did not lead immediately to wealth, was the beginning of a world-wide business when a Soho barber produced a transparent soap. His name is almost legendary to-day. He was Andrew Pears. Men who have made money by glazing pottery owe their fortune to a servant girl who fell asleep while watching a pot of boiling brine. When she awoke it was seen that the pot was glazed wher*e the brine had run over. Her master grew rich. So many of the things we use every day have made accidental fortunes, writes "F.W." in the Daily Mail. A man named Palmer hit upon the happy idea of the metal cap for beer bottles; and when he found a capitalist to back him he made thousands of pounds on the first year's sales. Thousands came to M. L. Lipman when it occurred to him that a rubber eraser should be indispensable to the pencil. The crinkle of the hairpin, the pointing of the woodscrew, waterproof cloth, and blotting paper, all came from apparently insignificant ideas, or from accidents due to carelessness.