Fathers of Invention

From Autobiography of Andrew T. Still

Andrew Taylor Still had a problem: His arm was sore from churning butter. And from what he wrote in his autobiography, he had a lot of butter to churn. "We had a number of cows and a great deal of milk," he wrote. "I churned and banged away for hours. I would raise the lid and lick the dasher, go through all the maneuvers of churning and pounding milk by the hour. I would churn and churn and churn, and rub my arm and churn..."

It was not long after the Civil War, and Still, my wife's third great-grandfather, was living in Baldwin City, Kansas. He was trying to make a living as a farmer, his future career as a physician having not fully materialized yet. Time spent churning butter was time not spent on other, more pressing matters. His solution to this problem was characteristically analytical and creative. He simply invented a better churn.