Engineer, Inventor. He is most recognized as the inventor of the Zerk Grease Fitting, which is a metal fitting used in mechanical systems to feed lubricants, usually lubricating grease, into a bearing under moderate to high pressure using a grease gun. Born Oskar Ulysses Zerkowitz the son of a Jewish textile merchant in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, he changed his surname to Zerk, which was permanently attached to the check-valve lubrication fitting known worldwide as the "Zerk fitting." After attending private schools, he earned a degree in engineering from Bruenn College and spent four years in England at a British textile center, where he developed and improved his weaving machine. As a teenager, he invented a type of time clock for his father's factory. He arrived for the first time at Ellis Island on February 9, 1907, on the ship "America" but travel back and forth for at least three voyages. At the beginning of World War I in 1914, he was in Austria and was drafted into the army as an Austrian citizen, serving at the rank of captain, highly decorated, and fighting against the United States. After the war, he married an 18-year-old bride and had a daughter before he returned to the United States and became a naturalized citizen in 1921. Long before America discovered the secret of a fresh cup of coffee, he invented a personal coffee bean grinder for his kitchen but never bothered to apply for a patent for the device. He did, however, patent some 300 other inventions during his 90-year life, a remarkable record. His engineering creativeness asserted itself in a multitude of fields: leg-slimming hosiery, quick-freezing ice cube trays, spatterproof nail brushes, fail-safe brakes for trolley interurban cars, vibration-free camera tripods, oil well recovery systems, and automotive refrigeration equipment. His most important invention, and the one that earned him the most money, was the tiny grease fitting, a lubrication system that became the basis for those used on nearly every car, truck, plane, and other mechanized vehicle. At the time of his death in 1968, it was estimated that 20 billion of those fittings had been manufactured. He is credited with designing and patenting stamped metal wheels and wheel covers for autos which, in the 1920s, offered a stylish alternative to wooden artillery wheels and wire wheels. He also devised a type of non-skid vehicular brake. After becoming very wealthy, he became an internationally prominent person, socializing with the elite. Zerk was in the worldwide press after a daring robbery at his opulent and art-filled Kenosha mansion "Dunmovin" on February 4, 1954. As an elderly man, Zerk was beaten and tied to a chair by three organized crime figures, who stole $ 250,000 worth of paintings and antiques, then escaped in Zerk's personal car. The case was quickly solved by the FBI, bringing the robbers to trial and sentencing them to prison. Most of his property was recovered, which was later donated to the University of Wisconsin. After his death, his three-story mansion "Dunmovin" went into disrepair and was demolished in 2012. Marrying for the first time at age 41 years old, he married four times and each time to a bride who was twenty to thirty years younger than him. His younger brother Adolph Zerkowitz and his son became recognized photographers in Spain, whose landscape aero photographs gain monitory appreciation at auctions.