Slovenian inventor of perfume atomizer and Olympic athlete Peter Florjančič dies aged 101

Slovenian inventor and Olympic athlete Peter Florjančič, father of the modern perfume atomizer, died aged 101 on Nov. 14, Total Slovenia News reports.

Florjančič was born in Bled (now in Slovenia) on March 5, 1919, just months after the creation of the Yugoslav state in 1918. He was the youngest member of the Yugoslav ski team at the 1936 Wniter Olympic Games, aged 16.

After a tumultuous life in and after World War II, he settled in Monte Carlo in 1950, where he invented the perfume atomizer, his best-known and most successful invention.

“My best and most complicated invention ever was the perfume atomizer. Perfume is a devil’s product, very hard to vaporize the way the industry requires and it has many substances that corrode many materials,” Florjancic said.

He led a charmed life for decades, among movie stars, royals and other members of what was then the so-called “jet set”, later also having had resided in Zurich, Davos, Italy, Germany, and the United States.

In 1956, he also had an uncredited role in the film “The Monte Carlo Story” alongside Marlene Dietrich.

He held more than 400 patents and his other successful inventions included a work-out bed and plastic ice skates. He also invented the plastic zipper and the airbag, but the available materials of the time did not make them practical. Those only became successful later after they perfected by others.

“I’ve had five citizenships, 43 cars and the longest passport. The profession of inventor forced me to spend 25 years in hotels, four years in cars, three years on trains, a year and a half on airplanes and a year on board of ships,” he wrote in his 2007 autobiography, “Jump into the Cream”.

Title image: Peter Florjančič, inventor of the perfume atomizer.