in this 60 Minutes segment.

This joyous man, Forrest Bird, celebrates his inventions, his life, his pretty young wife, and his wealth. One of my favorite excerpts:

And standing tall among them, all 6’4″ of him, is Forrest Bird. His brainchild, the modern medical respirator, has given the breath of life to countless people around the world. It all began with a gizmo he cobbled together long ago to help a friend with emphysema breathe.

“I went to the hardware store and got a doorknob. You can see this doorknob right here at the top,” Bird explains. “So the patient would push down like this on the doorknob and blow their lungs up. He did remarkably well with it.”