He laughed heartily, recounting letters he received from frustrated customers in the past. During our phone call, I read him some of the online reviews, including one that claims the banana slicer saved a couple’s marriage. Banana Bill isn’t involved with the production of the Hutzler 571 Banana Slicer, and to his knowledge, the proceeds do not support any charitable efforts. ![]() 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. To learn more about how and for what purposes Amazon uses personal information (such as Amazon Store order history), please visit our Privacy Notice.In 1989 Sheffield met with a plastics manufacturer in Hong Kong, built and tested a prototype, then secured a patent. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie Preferences, as described in the Cookie Notice. ![]() Click ‘Customise Cookies’ to decline these cookies, make more detailed choices, or learn more. ![]() Third parties use cookies for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalised ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. This includes using first- and third-party cookies, which store or access standard device information such as a unique identifier. If you agree, we’ll also use cookies to complement your shopping experience across the Amazon stores as described in our Cookie Notice. We also use these cookies to understand how customers use our services (for example, by measuring site visits) so we can make improvements. We use cookies and similar tools that are necessary to enable you to make purchases, to enhance your shopping experiences and to provide our services, as detailed in our Cookie Notice.
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