FLASH LIGHT

            The idea of a lighted flower pot, may strike us as pretty humorous, but it was the answer to a life long struggle for a Russian immigrant named conrad Hubert. Hubert came to the United States in 1890 when he was about 35 years old. He was flat broke. He did what he could do earn a living. He worked in a cigar store, ran a testuarent for a while and managed a boarding house. He even tried farming and repairing watches.

             Whatever he did, however, he never made much money. All he wanted was to stop worring about mankind ends meet. Now Hubert had a friend named Joshua had invented a flower pot with a battery in it. electricity from the battery made the flower "light up" when a button was pressed. Hubert decided he would try to sell these flower pots. Meanwhile, Joshua became interested in something new - electric trains - and he sold to his friend the flower pot iodeo for almost nothing.

   Fortunately, hurbert never went ahead with the flower pots because he had an ideo for a modification. He took the battery, the bulb and the paper tube from the pot and remade it into what he invention at first as a novelty, but the usefulness of the flashlight soon became apparent When he died in 1928 it must have seemed to Hurbert a long time ago that he was poor, He was worth $8,000,000.