Origins of the Flyswatter

摘要

The process of constructing the flyswatter as an everyday artifact took about four decades, from Montgomery's 1900 patent to WWII. Prominent doctors, designers, manufacturers, playwrights, and scout leaders, in addition to countless anonymous others, had worked to make it so. By the time Gates, Crumbine, Burgess, Bennett, and finally Dreyfuss died, the flyswatter had become a durable social construction; its design and use were commonplace. The flyswatter was born out of late-nineteenth-century medical and hygienic culture and came of age in the mid-twentieth century's booming economy of mass production and mass consumption. The flyswatter became everyday thanks to public health authorities, zealous civil associations, entrepreneurs, designers, and writers who constructed it as a socially routine and stable artifact with a recognizable form and function.