Word: licker
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...better qualified to take over than Ray Bliss. He started in politics "just for something to do" in 1931 on the level of envelope licker and errand runner during the mayoralty campaign in his home town of Akron. Slowly he worked his way up to state committeeman by impressing such sterling Republicans as Senator Robert A. Taft with his attention to detail. In 1947 Bliss decided to quit politics for the insurance and real estate business, but when the hurricane of Harry Truman's surprise victory hit in 1948, Taft immediately persuaded Bliss to come back as a salaried...
That was his passport to the comic strips, and no man ever stayed longer or showed more zany inventiveness. The Rube Goldberg machines, a byproduct of his engineering background, made him rich and world-famous. All his designs were models of ludicrous ingenuity. In his automatic stamp-licker, a dwarf robot overturned a can of ants onto a page of postage stamps, gum side up; then they were licked up by an anteater that had been starved for three days...
...assistant to lick a postage stamp and stick it on a piece of paper. This was left on the lab table, exposed to air, sun and dust. At the end of a month, one-quarter of the stamp's back yielded enough material to identify the licker as type...