INVENTIVE BRAIN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22609, 28 June 1935, Page 13

INVENTIVE BRAIN

ENGLISH WOMAN'S GIFT PASSION FOR IMPROVEMENT. A lost cap from a vanishing cream tube has led to the foundation of a bustness 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 Huddersfield mill owner and Huddersfield Town Football Club director, led an ordinary social life quite happily until one day she was annoyed because a vanishing cream 114 had lost itself and the cream worked out. She decided that something ought to be done about it. It took her nearly two years, but ah* Invented a tube which was airtight and from which the cap could not come off. Having satisfied herself, she forgot about the invention. But her, brain had takes the inventive turning. Her large house in Park drive became her workshop. She saw a shopkeeper put a grlmjr hand into a bottle of sweets to sell t« a child. "That's disgraceful," she said. " Something ought to be done about it." A bottle which served all purpose* of both the bottle arid the hand was the result. " I was very much in earnest about this," Mrs Robinson said to an inter- * viewer 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'r , car. That was. 10 years ago. Then Mrt 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 be used for walls, outside and inside, roofs, ceilings, floors, shop fronts and decoration. When Mrs Robinson decided that much more ought to be done about concrete she took a workshop and set to work. She now has nine men working fo* 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 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 stencih The pictures are in the concrete itself and will never rub or wear off. No machinery is used, and the cost is compara* tively 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 dis* cover. She has had no technical train* ing of any kind. " I saw that it waf wanted, and determined to find it," she says: " Once I want a thing I hold o» until I get it."