The "An Inventor For The Ordinary Man" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Carol had just finished cleaning out the coat closet and found three of the exact same black winter hats that I wear to cover my shaved head.  Seems that every year I would buy a new hat since I thought I had lost the hat from the year before.  Well, little did I know that I had stuffed it in the closet and had forgotten about it.  Lucky for me I now have three once again and don't have to buy a new one.  Now the problem is that the weather has been so mild that I don't need a hat quite yet.  Then to top off the hat find, Carol showed me the pair of earmuffs that I had worn for years.  They actually date back to when I had hair and didn't need the full winter hat I now have.  Carol still wears earmuffs and has the type that fit directly on her ears without any band connecting them.  Pretty neat idea so that people don't have to mess up their hairdo when wearing them.  Not quite sure when people began to wear earmuffs so I did some investigating.  

Chester Greenwood wearing his Champion Ear Protectors.

Seems that a 15 year-old boy fashioned the first earmuffs out of a loop of farm wire, some fur from a beaver and a piece of black velvet when his ears got cold while ice-skating.  Had his grandmother sew the pieces together and .... well, the rest is history.  Chester Greenwood, a resident of Farmington, Maine, had big ears that got extremely cold in the winter.  

The United States Patent Office illustration.

He was allergic to wool so the everyday muffler that most kids wore wasn't an option.  His new creation was an instant hit and kids all over the city began wearing them.  He called his earmuffs Champion Ear Protectors and eventually patented them on March 13, 1877 when he was 18 years-old.  Soon after he established a factory in a brick building which he dubbed "The Shop."  Six years later his shop was producing 50,000 earmuffs a year.  In 1936, the year after Greenwood died, his shop turned out 400,000 pairs of earmuffs and his town of Farmington was known as the Earmuff Capital of the World.  

Advertisement for his earmuffs.

Chester was not only good at making earmuffs, since he had over 100 patents including items such as a washing machine, a folding bed, a shock absorber, a mousetrap, an improved spark plug, a hook for pulling doughnuts from boiling oil, a tempered steel rake, a wide-bottom kettle, the advertising matchbook, ..... and the list goes on and on.  Chester was so well-liked and famous that in 1977 Farmington began to celebrate Chester Greenwood Day on the first Saturday in December.  A parade is held and the parade participants, spectators and even a few horses and dogs wear earmuffs.  The police cruisers, fire engines, school buses and motorcade vehicles are all decked out with earmuffs.  Chester Greenwood was a real success and his earmuffs gave him his start.  Only sad part of the whole story is that the earmuffs sold in Farmington today are mostly made in Taiwan and China.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.