A better mouse trap

The saying ‘Build a better mouse trap and the world will beat a path to your door’ is a gross misquote of a much longer statement by Waldo Emerson made in the 1860s. However over the years thousands have taken note.

The mouse trap has become one of the most frequently patented devices of all time. In America around four hundred patents are applied for every year with an average of forty being granted.

So many patents for mouse traps have been granted that they are listed under subclasses including impaling, choking, squeezing, electrocuting and explosive. However the world does not beat a path the patentee’s door, fewer that twenty of the thousands have been produced and made a, sometimes small, profit.
In the 1880s an inventor from Illinois William C Hooker created the first mass produced mouse trap. Hookers ‘Snap trap’ was cheap and effective, a spring loaded bar released when the mouse takes the bait – the trap that is still in common use today. It is estimated that traps of this design despatch over a quarter of a million mice a year.