Southern Alberta has been a hub for ingenuity over the years. Charles Noble will be a familiar name to many in the region; in 1935 he invented the “Noble blade” to minimize disturbance to the soil and prevent erosion. Less well known, perhaps, is Otto Wobick, another farmer who tinkered with ways to kill weeds and thistle in his fields while leaving a stubble layer on the soil. In 1933 Wobick designed and named the “Paul Bunyon Cultivator” and had it built by Barons Blacksmith. The one-of-a-kind implement was never patented, although Wobick used it on his own farm.

Andrew Briosi was another inventor who must be mentioned because of the volume of machines he designed in the 1940s and 50s. Briosi was an irrigation farmer who spent his free time looking for ways to make farming easier. He is best known for his sugar beet lifter, which modernized sugar beet harvesting; but he also invented machines to “vacuum” grasshoppers off of farm crops and golf balls from the driving range.

Southern Albertan women have also put their minds to work in solving everyday problems. Alberta Stubbs of Lethbridge invented a folding cup in 1920. According to the patent documents, Stubbs envisioned a neat and compact cup that “can be readily carried in the vest pocket, or in a lady’s purse.” Chloe Davies, mother of six children, came up with a design for a portable urinal in 1921. She suggested the device could be used “by women and children when travelling, and without inconvenience to the user.” Decades later, in 1973, Catherine Jackimszyk invented a mop squeezer and pail designed to “reduce the drudgery ordinarily attendant with this type of work.”

As these examples show, southern Albertans have been resourceful in improving what was available to them—or creating what was not.