Michael Nesmith aunts, and grandmother. Bette took temporary jobs ranging from clerical work to graphical design and developed very good secretarial skills, including shorthand and, auspiciously, touch typing. When Nesmith was 13, his mother invented the typewriter correction fluid later known commercially as Liquid Paper. Over the next 25 years she built the Liquid Paper Corporation into a multimillion-dollar international company, which she finally sold to Gillette in 1979 for US$48 million. She died a few months later, aged 56. Nesmith was enrolled in the Dallas public school system in 1949, aged 6. Describing himself as an indifferent student, he nevertheless participated
John Nesmith them. His purchase being made soon after the formation of the Merrimack Manufacturing Company, he sold the property to good advantage. While carrying on these varied and arduous undertakings Mr. Nesmith still found time to devote to mechanical study and experiment. Several of his discoveries and inventions were of great importance and value—among others the well-known machines for making wire fence and shawl fringe. Though naturally averse to mingling in politics, and never stooping to the acts by which popularity is often won, he was elected to various offices in the city government of Lowell, where his sound practical sense