Invention Of Mousetrap

One of many inventions to have been invented in several places at almost the same time, the sprung mousetrap was patented in America by William Hooker in 1894 and in Britain by James Henry Atkinson in 1898.

Mousetraps have been taxing inventors' ingenuity for centuries, and since the mid-19th century there have been more than 4,000 mousetrap patents granted in America alone. The classic is the sprung trap, or "snap trap", which has been immortalized by cartoons and is still in everyday use more than a century after its invention. The first sprung trap was invented by William Hooker (USA), patented in 1894 and marketed as the "Out O' Sight', with a trademark featuring a mouse peering out of the middle "O". (Hooker patented 27 inventions between 1865 and 1908; the first was for a hedge trimmer, but all the rest related to gates or animal traps.) Five years later, John Mast (USA) invented a very similar device and set up a factory in Litiz, Pennsylvania (now Woodstream Corp.) to market the Victor, which today is said to be the world's bestselling mousetrap.

Four years after Hooker patented the Out O' Sight (and a year before Mast's Victor), James Henry Atkinson (England) patented another sprung mousetrap. Whether he invented his trap independently or copied Hooker's is open to debate, but it is almost certain that under new rules introduced by the British Patent Office in1905, he would not have been able to patent his invention because it was not novel. Atkinson had previously filed patents relating to window blinds, fireplaces and laundry irons. Then, on 30 December 1898, he filed a patent for an: "Improved treadle trap for mice, rats and the like." This patent mitigates the suggestion that he copied his trap from Hooker, because the treadle trap relied on mice simply running across the trap - it was Atkinson's 1899 patent for an improved version that described the classic "Little Nipper" mousetrap, which, according to the patent, is "caused to 'go off' by a pull at the bait". The Little Nipper was, and still is, made by the Welsh company Procter Brothers at its wire-working factory in Gwent.

Source - The Book Of Inventions by Ian Harrison