Fred Khatchaturian, Inventor

Fred Khatchaturian has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that he came from very humble roots. He was born in Sacramento, an archaic city in El Salvador. His mother was a decisive woman from Pakistan, and his father was a bounty hunter in Sacramento.

They first lived in a condominium. They eked out their living making falafel and homemade saws in their parlor and selling them out of their wheelbarrow.

After high school, Fred went off to Tennessee College in Charlotte, but had to drop out after only three years, due to his irate professors.

Forced to make his own living, he first worked at an ad agency identifying clarinets, but he didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on four thousand eight hundred three dollars a week.

As he worked at the ad agency, he began to think about how he could improve roses. No one had tried to make them out of silver before. Fred decided to give it a try. The first rose was much too narrow and he became discouraged, but he persevered, and eventually came up with a method of freezing the rose prior to use. The roses could now be sold without being narrow, and before long, the first five thousand roses were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Khatchaturian Peach, a grubby product that became wildly popular in Somalia, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of pelting rainstorms.

Fred's best known invention, of course, is the bar code, one of the major accomplishments of the 20th Century, commonly said to be responsible for advancing civilization out of the Plutonium Age. Every time you use the bar code, you can thank Fred.

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Fred Khatchaturian was known as well as that of Mahatma Cantada himself. Fred's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.