![]() Now 74 years old, Sheffield no longer makes money from the banana slicer, its patent having expired in 1999. Thanks in part to Sheffield’s banana slicer, Pathway now serves more than 500 daily and has helped over 22,000 people. ![]() In the late 1970s, the orphanage supported about 20 disabled children. More than 60 percent of the proceeds went directly to fund the orphanage in India, now known as Pathway. Bush and first lady Barbara Bush called the invention “special.” Queen Elizabeth II’s personal chef responded, thanking Sheffield for his “great invention.” And Banana Bill’s hard work paid off: Throughout the early 1990s, he sold nearly 1 million slicers. The gregarious inventor sent prototypes to political leaders as well. He formed a partnership with Chiquita by flying to Cincinnati to convince a very skeptical VP of marketing that “a home with a banana slicer would buy more bananas than a home that didn’t have one.” (Sheffield says that the VP initially declined, responding that Chiquita’s “business is bananas, not banana slicers,” but he was soon sold on the product after he saw how much his kids loved it.) Inventions don’t sell themselves. He wrote to CEOs, owners, and managers alike, asking them to stock their shelves with his slicer. (The patent describes the banana slicer as a “tool which has a frame circumscribing an area into which a typical banana readily fits, and a plurality of spaced ribs or blades disposed transversely to the longitudinal axis of the frame and interconnecting opposite sides of the frame.”) But how would he convince every household to buy one? Sheffield purchased a book with the name and address of every grocery store in America. In 1989 Sheffield met with a plastics manufacturer in Hong Kong, built and tested a prototype, then secured a patent.
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