Sync has a short profile of Michael Boehm, the man who invented the George Forman grill.
[Muhammad] Ali, Joe Namath and even Joe DiMaggio were tapped as potential talking heads for the all-pervading product, originally named the Short Order Grill. But Foreman, "he's kind of nuts, and he loves burgers," Boehm says, explaining his logic for choosing Gorgeous George. "I found out that he ate them before every fight!" About 70 million units have been sold since 1995, so does that make the Illinois-based innovator a bazillionaire? As a salaried employee of the grill's original manufacturer, Taiwan's Tsann Kuen, Boehm was entitled to a modest semimonthly paycheck—no more, no less. Foreman, on the other hand, received 40 percent of sales in exchange for lending his moniker and eventually sold his name outright for a beefy $127.5 million (plus $10 million in stock options).
