HATTIE: (Voiceover) Bob Sakata was born in 1926, and grew up on a 10-acre farm in California. He helped his father in the field and started thinking about how to make work easier. All right. So when you started farming, you didn't have any of this fancy equipment?

BOB: Oh, no. You probably took a picture of one of the pictures I've had. We just started with a team of horses and that John Deere tractor. And that leveler that you saw in the back of that picture, I built with railroad ties and timbers because we needed a piece of machinery that would be able to level the land. And in those days, there weren't hydraulics or that type of thing, so I had to innovate the hydraulic and adjust the blade manually to dig the dirt and cut the dirt and then unload it, and so forth.

HATTIE: So tell me about the first machine you thought of or the first piece of equipment.

BOB: I think I was about 10 years old at that time. Dad had us picking corn out in the field. I was the one that was carrying the baskets, and he would pick the corn. And when the basket got full, I had to walk and carry it all the way to the end, underneath the shade tree, and dump it. And he would come and pack it. I thought that was silly, so that night I just made a little narrow sled with sides on it, and we had a horse, and I had the horse pull it. And so we were able to pick the corn and throw it in the sled.

HATTIE: So when you were 10 years old, you were already figuring out ways to make farming easier for people. BOB: Easier, right. It's just all common sense. But I did have a very curious mind. At the age of maybe eight or ten years old, I didn't go to bed reading a funny book. I would enjoy reading tractor magazines and equipment magazines. I'd look at it and I would say that would be a better way than the way they're making things.

HATTIE: Bob, this is a different looking tire to me. Tell me about this. BOB: I'm first impressed that you noticed that it's different.

HATTIE: It's not flat. It has this bump in the middle of it.

BOB: That's right. It's what we designed, and it is common sense. You just develop a tire that is in the same configuration as the furrow. This tire falls in the furrow and just goes by itself. You don't have to steer it.

HATTIE: And what is this called? It has a name?

BOB: Single-rib tire.

HATTIE: And now you get them straight from the factory?

BOB: Yes.

HATTIE: How long ago was it that you invented this?

BOB: About six years ago.

HATTIE: So this is one of your new ones. BOB: Oh, yes. This is one of the new ones.

HATTIE: They didn't send you any big old royalty check yet?

BOB: No, but they're kind to me.