HE WAS once a multi-millionaire, only to lose most of the money he made.
During his engineering career, he secured patents for no fewer than 26 different inventions, from precision machinery to disposable plastic gloves and false fingernails.
And his own engineering company in Hull ended up exporting some of his designs to more than 20 countries, as well as supplying big names such as British Aerospace, Reckitt and Colman, Priestmans and Rolls-Royce.
Now, Ted Fullerton is about to tell his life story, at the age of 92.
The retired engineer's autobiography – The Diary Of An Uneducated – is being published in the autumn.
Mr Fullerton, who lives in Cottingham, said: "My story is about how I made my way in life through sheer hard work.
"It's about success and failure. In business, you get to experience both and, in my case, I experienced both."
Born in Hull, he left school at 14 after a poverty-stricken childhood.
"My father died when I was just three. I had a brother and a sister and my mother somehow managed to bring us up single-handed.
"We didn't have much money. At one stage, we lived in a condemned house in Scott Street, which was identified for demolition.
"Looking back, it was grinding poverty. We didn't have any toys – all I had to play with was a pencil and a box of paints from Woolworths."
After initially working as a page boy at the Regal cinema in Ferensway, he was given a job at Kingston Engineering in Dansom Lane on the recommendation of a local priest. In my ignorance, I was under the impression I had been taken on as an apprentice," he recalled. "I was unaware of the restrictive practices of the trade union at the company, which required me to join the union before being apprenticed.
"Then it was made clear to me that I could not become an apprentice because, at the grand old age of 17, I was too old.
"As a result, for the rest of my working life, I would never be recognised as a skilled tradesman, regardless of my capabilities."
That experience would lead to future conflicts with unions when his own manufacturing business, Turbo Tools, began to flourish.
But with a talent for engineering and design, he steered the firm to become one of the city's most successful small manufacturing companies in the 1960s and 1970s.
Even in retirement, Mr Fullerton stays active through his love of painting, as well as recently designing a hatchback cover for his mobility scooter.
"I never stop looking at ways to make things work a bit better. My advice to anyone with an idea for an invention is stick to it, because one day it will happen."
