En route to the Pacific Coast by plane, the merchandising manager of Abraham & Straus, Brooklyn department store, read a 15-line item in the Business & Finance section of TIME'S February 14 issue (see cut) that made him itch to get to a telephone. The story was a brief account (sent in by a TIME correspondent) of the fact that a Birmingham, Ala. housewife had apparently invented a sewing machine needle that would unrip a seam in the same time that it took to sew it. If true, the Abraham & Straus-man said later, "this needle was what an eraser is to a pencil."

When he arrived at the Los Angeles airport, the merchandiser telephoned his home office to get in touch with the inventor and see if the needle really worked. When it came to the attention of the promotion head of A. & S., she knew exactly what the merchandising manager was talking about. She had read the identical item in TIME on the train returning from her vacation in Florida, and was equally excited about it.

Meanwhile, the inventor, Mrs. Ruth Lawrence, wife of a U.S. Army colonel, was hearing from some other interested parties. Said she last week to our Birmingham correspondent: "After the story appeared in TIME we were deluged with telegrams, orders and letters. I had to hire two stenographers to answer them. There were literally trunksful of letters inquiring about the ripper. The money sent to us in envelopes was amazing, but it was all sent back because we were not in production at the time. There were also phone calls and cables from Italy, South America, Japan, Alaska, Germany, and other countries. It was all the more exciting to us because my husband and I have been readers of TIME for many years."

At present the Gilman Engineering and Manufacturing Corp. of Janesville, Wis., a subsidiary of the Parker Pen Co., which has been granted exclusive rights to manufacture the ripper, is working to fill orders for millions (the exact figure is a trade secret) of the needles. According to Mrs. Lawrence, additional orders are coming in daily from all over the world.

Abraham & Straus put the ripper on the market in the metropolitan area and, at their invitation, Mrs. Lawrence came to New York City a few weeks ago to demonstrate her invention. She is an alert, attractive, grey-haired grandmother who shoots golf in the 80s and sings in her church choir. A native of Hartwell, Mo. she went to school and to business college in Fort Scott, Kans., attended a dressmaking school in Chicago, and was married in 1916. Her only child, a daughter, is married and has three children.

Mrs. Lawrence says that she became mechanically-minded in self-defense. Her father was a natural-born inventor with a long string of posthole diggers, folding lawn chairs, etc. to his credit. He was also in the rubber-tired buggy business, and his shop was a maze of band and rip saws and a big, power-driven sewing machine, which Mrs. Lawrence learned to operate when she was nine years old. Her father incidentally, was descended from a Parisian tailor who emigrated to the U.S.

Mrs. Lawrence confesses to being somewhat overwhelmed at the way her invention has caught on. She figured out the basic principle of it in 1931. In 1941 she brought the idea home with her after being evacuated from Manila, where her husband was stationed. The ripper was perfected only about six months ago, and at that time Mrs. Lawrence figured that it might have a modest commercial success.

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