In January 1922, Christian Nelson, an Onawa, Iowa, schoolteacher, patented the Eskimo Pie. An instant success, trade magazines raved about it. One retailer declared that "although nobody knew it until it happened, it seems that everybody in these United States was waiting for someone to come along and invent a bar of ice cream coated with sweet chocolate."
It was only a small jump from a chocolate-covered ice cream bar to an ice cream bar on a stick. Harry B. Burt (1875-1926) arrived in Youngstown as an eighteen-year-old in 1893 and opened a candy store on S. Hazel Avenue in downtown Youngstown.
While working in his ice cream store, Burt created his own recipe for a smooth chocolate coating that would be compatible with ice cream. His daughter Ruth performed the first taste test. Although it tasted good, Ruth thought it was too messy to eat.
In 1920 he inserted a stick into the chocolate-covered ice cream bar and created the Good Humor Bar. He announced that this was "the new clean convenient way to eat ice cream."
He applied for patents covering the process, the manufacturing apparatus, and the product on January 30, 1922. Initially it was rejected because it was too similar to the Eskimo Pie. Burt went to Washington with a pail of Good Humor bars to show the difference. Harry Burt was granted a patent on October 9, 1923.
Soon after the Good Humor bar was created, Burt outfitted a fleet of twelve street vending trucks with freezers and bells from which to sell his creation.
When the Burt’s West Federal Street store opened on April 3,1922, Burt purchased twelve refrigerator trucks for neighborhood distribution of his new ice cream bars. Burt outfitted a fleet of vending trucks with freezers and bells from which to sell his creation.
History of invention of ice cream on stick
