Capito Luchs (Lynx) Mousetrap (1920)
It is hard for many of us to grasp how significant a problem rodents were to our ancestors. While mice still pose health risks to modern populations, the average person in the 19th and early 20th centuries were keenly battling these vermin. This is evidenced by the relatively large number of mousetrap advertisements found in publications of the day. And who hasn’t heard the phrase, “Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door.”
(Great side bar on the “build a better mousetrap” phrase. I prefer the version “If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the wood.” Definitely worth a read – Wikipedia Mousetrap.)
One prolific producer of late 19th and early 20th century traps was master carpenter Carl Bender. In 1889 Bender created his first mouse trap in his workshop in Sonnenburg, Germany. The goal was to create a self-resetting trap that could efficiently trap and kill mice while minimizing the odor. After trial and undoubtedly a fair amount of error, Bender patented his mouse trap in 1896 in Germany and moved to full scale production in a large specialized factory in Dotzheim. Later in 1911, he patented his now dubbed Capito mouse trap in America. Sometime in the 1920s, he sold the company to a family run company called Wilmking. The Wilmking company was a successful manufacturer of mouse traps and with the acquisition of Bender’s water trap feature, rebranded the device the Capito Luchs. Luchs was the Wilmking brand established in 1906. The basic design has been copied many times over the years and recent examples paying homage to Bender’s early water trap design can still be found.
Note: Luchs is the German word for Lynx. The Lynx is a medium-sized wild cat.
So let’s have some fun and take a closer look at this wonderfully crafted killing machine.
- Dating the Example:
- Patent Information (United States and Germany):
- How it Works:
- Great Advertisement:
Dating the Example:
Once you put the timeline together, coming up with a “no earlier than” date for my Capito Luchs mouse trap is fairly easy.
Early models of the Capito trap do not appear to have markings on any of the exposed metal pieces and later German pieces are marked with Capito and German copyright information. My trap has clear markings and symbols on the first door plate in both English and German. Based on the dual languages we can assume the trap was made for the American market. That moves the earliest possible date to 1911 based on the US patent.
Next we know that the Luchs (Lynx) logo was added after the Wilmking family acquired the Capito design. I cannot find an exact date for the business acquisition, but the few sources I could find put it in the 1920. There apparently is a book, Der Neue Luchs Katalog, that goes into detail, but I am having a hard time finding a copy and apparently it is in German… sigh…
Patent Information:
The US patent information was surprisingly easy to find thanks to Google Play. Below is an image of the Official Gazette of the United States Patent Office, Volume 166, 1911. Search for Capito or go to page 500.
How it Works:
In short, very well!
You begin by placing bait placed in a side compartment. There are variations of the compartment, but in short, there is an access door and a wire or mesh inner wall. The mouse smelling the bait enters the first chamber. The plate of the floor triggers the first door hatch to drop and sets the secondary floor hatch back to a closed position. The imprisoned mouse then climbs up through a wire corridor. On the way up, the mouse squeezes by a small gate that allows only one way passage. Once across the gate, the mouse finds itself trapped at the upper end of the narrow tunnel. The only way out is through a hole leading to a platform above the water tank. After squeezing through this hole the mouse falls through a trapdoor into the metal water tank where it drowns. The trapdoor and the hatch at the entrance are linked. As soon as the trapdoor is pushed down, the first door hatch is raised and the pressure plate falls back ready for the trap’s next victim. The ingenuity of the device is that it resets itself after every mouse completes the journey.
Mouse trap elements in sequence:
Great Advertisement:
This is a fun sales advertisement for the Capito trap!
Gustave Glaser, having dissolved the firm of Glaser & Hofmann, formerly of Philadelphia, is now showing complete lines of imported specialties at 76 Park Place, New York. He is the sole representative for North America of Arndt Bros., the well-known German manufacturers, and many new and attractive articles are displayed in his wareroom.
One of the quickest of the season’s sellers is the “Capito” mouse and rap tap, which is illustrated. It is entirely different from all other traps, an is so effective that seventy mice have been caught in seven days by a single trap. The rodent entering the trap causes the door to close, and as there is no escape this way, it runs forward up the wire-covered passage to the balanced bridge. Once on the bridge the animal is, by its own weight, thrown into a tank of water. The movement of the bridge at the same time reopens the door and thus the trap is reset. There is no smell of dead mice left on the trap, but only the smell of living mice, which attracts others to their doom.
