Carl Thomas Anderson

Carl Thomas Anderson was born in Madison, Wisconsin, the son of Norwegian immigrants. Anderson initially worked in his Norwegian immigrant father's Madison planing mill, where he developed carpentry skills, became a cabinetmaker and invented a patented folding desk, which is still being manufactured today. Near the end of the 19th century, he traveled the United States, drifting to Omaha, San Francisco and Seattle, where he worked until the city's 1889 fire.[