An eccentric great-uncle (by marriage, not blood kin) claimed to have been the inventor of the tabulator stop for typewriters. The whole family knew that he had a vivid imagination (he told whoppers!), but since that item was noted in his obituary, I always assumed (risky, assuming anything!) that it was true. But now I find from an Ancestry.com link to Patent Office records that the actual inventor was a man with the same surname (Schulte) but a different given name. Great-uncle George worked all his working life, he claimed, for the Remington Rand Co., and lived in Astoria, L.I., N.Y. The actual inventor, John, seems to have lived in Newark, N.J., across the river but not very far from Astoria, and his patent seems to have been owned by his employer, a company that was bought out by Remington, according to their website.