Gail Borden (1801- 1874)

One of Gail Borden's more memorable creations was the "Terraqueous Wagon." This four-wheeled contraption, complete with sails and a rudder, was designed to travel equally well on land or sea. He had to drop his plans for the vehicle rather suddenly, however, after a group of town elders from Galveston, Texas, nearly drowned in the Gulf of Mexico during a demonstration ride.

Initially, Borden's inventions resulted in colossal failures, but eventually they led to great achievements. With assets worth some $100,000 in 1850 (a small fortune for his day), he risked and lost almost everything on his "meat biscuit", a dehydrated meat mixed with flour. He moved to New York to be closer to trade centers and to promote the product. After many years of effort, he abandoned the project so that he could spend all his time on another of his inventions--a process to condense milk. The successive failures of two of his milk condensing plants in Connecticut (in 1856 and 1857) exhausted his already dwindled resources. The backing of a New York financier, however, allowed him to continue a few more years. It was not until the outbreak of the Civil War, and the resulting demand for longer-lasting condensed milk by the Union army, that Borden's success was finally assured.