Alberta Inventors and Inventions

Photo taken at a United Farm Women of Alberta meeting in Heart Lake in 1921.

Inventive Spirit, a province-wide research project about the history of invention in Alberta, was initiated by the Medicine Hat Museum and Art Gallery in 1995 as a collaborative research and exhibition project of the Alberta Regional Museums Network, a group of community museums throughout Alberta. In 1998, the Red Deer and District Museum, one of the initial partners, assumed responsibility for project management and development of a feasibility study for a travelling exhibition. Inventive Spirit has developed a database of approximately 3,972 inventors who created approximately 4,179 inventions patented from 1905-1975. Of these inventors, approximately 81 were women; of these, a small handful of women was from Aspenland.ⁱ

Inventive Spirit compiled all entries in The Canadian Patent Office Record of inventions patented by Albertans during this period. While the interests of the project extended beyond patented objects and processes, use of this source enabled development of a scientific, quantifiable database. These items were then cross-referenced by category (structures, building furnishings, personal artifacts, tools and equipment, communication artifacts, transportation artifacts, art objects, recreational artifacts, societal artifacts, packages and containers, and unclassifiable artifacts), classification, object name, name of the inventor, gender (where indicated by the inventor’s name), patent number and date.

The database enables us to draw conclusions about inventive activity in Alberta; it suggests relationships between the nature of the invention and the economy and helps to identify trends and concerns, such as: adaptation of farm machinery to local conditions; storage and transportation of grain; alternative sources of energy in the pre-electricity era; the development of the oil and gas industries; and, with the emphasis on heating and transportation, the importance of winter. Although provincially the inventions were predominantly agricultural, they ranged from mining tools and equipment to building technology, transportation vehicles and accessories, domestic technology, communications equipment, etc. Collectively they represent the ingenuity, adaptability and independence of the people who have lived in Alberta.

The fact that such a small proportion of the inventors were women doesn't necessarily mean that women were less inventive than men – simply that their names are associated with fewer patents. Women may well have collaborated on, or made unacknowledged contributions to, some of the inventions patented by their husbands, fathers, brothers or sons, particularly domestic items. Also, patented inventions only tell part of the story. Inventions are patented when the inventor thinks that there may be financial gain by developing, manufacturing and marketing their ideas. Many inventions by women weren't commercially viable but were ingenious solutions to common problems.

The Alberta Women's Institutes (AWI) an organization dedicated to educating women for their roles as wives, mothers and community volunteers, commented in 1923 that:

There were a few patented inventions by women, but more commonly, women developed make-dos, and shared their ideas freely. Make-dos are objects that have been created using, modifying or adapting existing objects for another purpose or to make them more effective for their original function. They tend to become common throughout a geographical region or cultural group, and are difficult to trace to an inventor, as such. An example would be the berry pickers made from tin cans and nails, an adaptation of the earlier wooden version.

Women developed new approaches to housekeeping that were spread from mother to daughter, neighbour to neighbour, through women's organizations like the AWI, the United Farm Women of Alberta and church groups, and through articles in farm magazines such as the Nor'West Farmer and Farm and Ranch Review. For example, the column "Real Helps for Homemakers: Some of them Invented by our Readers," encouraged women to send in information and sketches of their "handy home-made household device." One column features a spoon rest for the top of a kettle that was designed by W.A.J. of Alberta.^iv

J.J. Brown asked the question "What is an important invention?" in his book Ideas in Exile: A History of Canadian Invention. In his mind, the economic criterion was the most significant:

This attitude reinforces women's reluctance to patent their inventions – they weren't taken seriously. Thinking back to a time when Calgary's streets were not paved, women's skirts rubbed the ground, clothing was very difficult to clean, baths were infrequent, and women's undergarments weren't particularly hygienic, the mechanical skirt lifter is important from a social history perspective, although not from an economic history perspective.

Of the inventors included in the database, the women from Aspenland were: May Florence Stewart, of Coronation, who with Walter Chafe Cole was an assignee of a half interest in a pneumatic tire in 1916; Edith R. Thomas, of Trochu, who patented a dishwashing machine in 1923; Ida May McLeod, of Hobbema, who patented a sanitary food protector in 1930; and Petrea Christine Sharp, of Bashaw, who patented an embroidery kit in 1933. It was very difficult to find out more information about these women.

Women of Aspenland