Flycatcher
A fly catcher (also: fly paper or honey strip ) is used to get rid of annoying house flies indoors . Flypaper was first developed in the 1880s. The current use of a cardboard strip in a cardboard tube is based on an invention from 1909.
Components
The fly catcher consists of a 50 cm long and 5 cm wide cardboard strip which is coated with fly glue . New catchers can be found in small cardboard tubes with rolled-up cardboard strips inside. The goods usually come with a thumbtack to attach to the ceiling.
Much larger versions are also offered in specialist shops, which are intended for use in animal stalls, for example.
Functionality and handling
The fly catcher is usually attached to the ceiling of a room. It is recommended to first use the attached thumbtack to fasten it, then to carefully pull down the cardboard cylinder while turning it at the same time, in order to unwind the cardboard strip.
After hanging up, the houseflies to be got rid of can be found more or less quickly on the cardboard strip. Since the applied fly glue is very sticky, the insects are unable to detach from the trap and they perish there. The glue can consist of various substances, compositions of natural resins, honey, water, rosin and attractants , which are supposed to attract the flies, are common.
Due to the way they work, flycatchers, unlike insecticides, are not suitable for making a room fly-free within a very short time. Rather, the user is dependent on the pests being drawn to the cardboard strips wetted with fly glue by the attractants and flying towards them. It usually takes several days before a noticeable effect occurs.
history
The first widely used flypaper was developed in the United States in the 1880s by a company later known as The Tanglefoot Company . The druggist William Thum commissioned his four sons Otto, Hugo, William and Ferdinand to improve earlier, inadequate solutions. They developed a mixture based on castor oil, resin and wax that lasted much longer and did not soak the backing paper. In 1887 they patented their now perfected fly paper.
In 1909 the Swabian confectioner and cough drop manufacturer Theodor Kayser (1862–1930) invented the long-lasting flycatcher, which is still used today. Kayser used strips of cardboard previously coated with sugar syrup, but especially in bakeries with their warmth, the sugar syrup dripped off too quickly or dried up in a short time. The inventor took over the idea of a rolled-up strip inside a cardboard tube when he was on vacation in Bohemia from the storage of the cardboard strips there, which, however, dried up just as quickly. Back at home in his hometown of Waiblingen, Kayser developed this idea further and was finally able to produce the right mixture of resins, fats, honey and oils with a chemist friend, which could be stored almost indefinitely and at the same time served for many weeks when open.
In 1910 the flycatcher was registered for the first time in Switzerland under the brand name Aeroplan , but had to be abandoned due to objections from aircraft construction and the toy industry. In 1911 the new name Aeroxon was chosen .
Others
In German literature, Robert Musil created a memorial to the Tanglefoot flycatcher in his 1913 text “The fly paper” (“The fly paper Tangle-foot is about thirty-six centimeters long and twenty-one centimeters wide; it is coated with a yellow, poisoned glue. .. ").
In football jargon , the term flycatcher is used for goalkeepers who often misjudge the trajectory of the ball and therefore often miss it.
See also
- fly swatter
- Fly glass
- Yellow board (yellow sticker)
- Venus Flytrap
Web links
- www.aeroxon.de: History of the flycatcher used today
- Safety data sheet of a manufacturer ( PDF file; 22 kB)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b David A. Rider: Flypaper ( Memento of the original from January 28, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ www.ftd.de How the flies fell for people ( Memento from September 13, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Heinz J. Drügh: In the text laboratory. The descriptive dialogue with the image medium in Robert Musil's fly paper . In: Matthias Luserke-Jaqui , Rosmarie Zeller (eds.): Musil-Forum: Studies on the Literature of Classical Modernism, Volume 27, 2001–2002, Walter de Gruyter 2003. S. 169, S.186 (“... die The first version of the text comes from the Roman diary booklet number 7, which dates from March 1913 to January 1914 ”).
