Everyone knows (or is) someone who fancies themself an innovator/entrepreneur/inventor, a few actually succeeding and most of the rest blaming the circumstances surrounding their Voila! moment. Early on in Bingham County history, to get your idea out into the public you needed only to incorporate and solicit shareholders to fund your endeavor--your friends and family were likely your "angel investors".
With canneries, creameries, mines, railroads, and canal systems criss-crossing the blank slate of the Idaho Territory and the bankrolls of its citizen-financiers, the Idaho legistature established The Blue Sky Commission in the 1920s, a government entity to oversee new corporate entities and dampen the occurrence of fraud.
Bingham County had its share of idea men, including those who started the Penetrato Company--Hans Peterson, Riverside store owner, was on the board of directors.
The soothing salve was an all-purpose lotion that cured aches and pains and worked as a mosquito repellent--still a sales point a hundred years later.
In 1916, another Bingham County invention appeared: an egg preserving lacquer, useful in those days when refrigeration was possible but far less common than it is today.
Ten thousand jars were produced in 1916, with a thousand heading for Denver, 1000 for Nebraska, 1500 for Seattle and 700 for Salt Lake City.
Some Blackfoot men in 1913 truly could claim to be ahead of their time, seeing the advantage to shipping automobile parts in from far away places and assembling the cars locally, rather than bringing them in as fully complete vehicles. Farm equipment would be shipped this way in the coming decades, and by the late twentieth century the practice was common for foreign autos, as well--though Blackfoot's endeavor didn't get very far.
Maybe the most interesting invention by a Blackfooter (though a recent one at the time) was a 1910 "walk-in" onesie, a combination waist-skirt-panties suitable for two to ten year olds. It buttoned in back.
Here's a copy of Mrs. Burket's patent, which has expired should you wish to resurrect it, perhaps as a retro fashion.
Mrs. Burket also started what may have been Blackfoot's first dance studio, then also started the equivalent of what might have been the first daycare. Both enterprises must have failed, along with her husband's law practice, for they moved to Roberts within a couple years and shortly after to Arcadia, California.
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