History
In its October 1911 issue, Popular Mechanics magazine had a piece showing a model "fly trap" that used all the elements of a modern bug zapper, including electric light and electrified grid. The design was executed by two unnamed Denver men and was conceded to be too expensive to be of practical use. The device was 10 by 15 inches (25 by 38 cm), contained 5 incandescent light bulbs, and the grid was 1⁄16-inch (1.59 mm) wires spaced 1⁄8-inch (3.18 mm) apart with a voltage of 450 volts. Users were supposed to bait the interior with meat.
According to the US Patent and Trademark Office, the first bug zapper was patented in 1934 by William F. Folmer and Harrison L. Chapin. They were issued U.S. Patent 1,962,439.
Separately, Dr. W.B. Herms, a professor of parasitology at the University of California had been working on large commercial insect traps for over 20 years for protection of California's important fruit industry. In 1934 he introduced the electronic insect killer that became the model for all future bug zappers.
Read more about this topic: Bug Zapper
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We aspire to be something more than stupid and timid chattels, pretending to read history and our Bibles, but desecrating every house and every day we breathe in.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)
“Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernism’s high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.”
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. Sunday Times: Books (London, April 21, 1991)