INVENTIVE BRAIN

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22142, 22 June 1935, Page 2 (Supplement)

INVENTIVE BRAIN

ENGLISH WOMAN'S GIFT PASSION FOR IMPROVEMENT UNIQUE BUSINESS FOUNDED A lost cap from a vanishing-cream tube has led to the foundation of a business which is the only one of its kind in the world. Behind it is the story of a woman with a remarkable mind.

Mrs. Norman Robinson, charming auburn-haired wife of a Huddersfifjld millowner and Huddersfiekl Town Football Club director, led an ordinary social lii'e quite happily until one day she was annoyed because a vanishing-cream lid had lost itself and the cream worked out. She decided that something ought to be done about it. It took her nearly two yearti, but she invented a tube which was air-tight ana from which tho cap could not come off. Having satisfied herself, she forgot about the invention. But her brain had taken the inventive turning. Her large house in Park Drive became her workshop. She saw a shopkeeper put a grimy hand into a bottle of sweets to sell to a child. "That's disgraceful," she said. " Something ought to be done about it." A bottle which served all purposes of both the bottle and the hand was the result. " I was very much in earnest about this," Mrs. Robinson said to a interviewer recently, " and wrote to manufacturing confectioners. They replied saying the invention was excellent, but as it would cost 3s 6d for each bottle, it was uncommercial. I learned my lesson. Everything I have invented since has been strictly practical."

Next came a skid preventer, which Mrs. Robinson used on her husband's car. That was 10 years ago. Then Mrs. Robinson saw a poor family on a railway platform struggling with baby and baggage. She invented a suitcase attachment that let down two wooden

legs on which the case could stand when required. There followed an air-filled rubber sole and heel, then a tin-opener, perfectly simple but original, that can be made for one-eighth of a penny and given away with every tin. As soon as Mrs. Robinson was satisfied with each invention she went on to the next. Business possibilities did not interest her. Her husband was indulgently amused at his wife's habit of leaving bits of iron and rubber on the drawing room chairs. He became resigned, to her having the thing " that-something-must-be done-about-it " facing her in the middle of the mantelpiece when she went to bed. Her friends were quite nice when they arrived for tea and found her with black hands and a thwarted look. And then came the invention that the building trade has been searching

for for years. It is glazed concrete which can bo used for walls, outside and inside, roofs ceilings, floors, shop fronts and decoration. When Mrs. Robinson decided that much more ought to be dono about concrete, she took a workshop and set to work. She now has nine men working for her, and she has had orders from all parts of England and offers for rights from foreign countries. The concrete is waterproof, fireproof, and will not graze or crack. Mrs. Robinson has made it in dozens of different finishes, and will make it in I any other that is asked for. Some look like wallpaper, some like stone, glass, bricks, or marble. Some are in the form of pictures —a landscape, a flower design, and there is one that looks like a stencil. The pictures are in the concrete itself and will never rub or wear off. No machinery is used, and the cost is comparatively small. All the workmen are pledged to secrecy. There are some processes that no one but Mrs. Robinson knows. She can give no explanation of how she came to invent something that the most expert builders had been unable to discover. She has had no technical training of any kind. " 1 saw that it was wanted, and determined to find it," sho says. " Once I want a thing 1 hold on until I get it."