Mario Puratić

Mario Puratić (1904 to 1993), usually spelled Puretic in English, was a Croatian-born American inventor who made major advances in fishing technology. Born in Sumartin on the island of Brač to a family of farmers and fishermen, he emigrated to the United States in 1938, worked at steel works and in the Brooklyn harbour, and after the Second World War moved to San Pedro, California, where he fished for tuna. In 1953 he invented the Puretic power block, a pulley that let five or six men haul a purse seine net where eight to ten had been needed. The Seattle firm Marco produced it as the Power Block in 1955, and by 1960 most northern seine boats used it. He was named inventor of the year in the United States in 1975.