In the days when this country had a wooden economy, before the oil economy we now have, an animal trap was likely made of wood. Native Americans were able to pick lobster off the beach at low tide, and didn’t need a trap. In Maine, European settlers didn’t catch lobster for food much before canning markets developed in the 1870’s. Soon after that lobster were not plentiful enough to pluck off the beach and so a wood trap was used.

Wooden traps remained the means, largely unchanged, for about 100 years. The mid 1970’s mark the visible beginning of the change to the wire mesh lobster trap. But about 20 years earlier, in 1957, a guy who had hand hauled lobster traps at the age of twelve, and to this day holds a lobster license in Massachusetts, got an idea for a wire mesh lobster trap. Not just a wire trap, but a plastic coated wire lobster trap.

Jim Knott, while setting wood traps from a row boat at Gloucester, learned the basics of wood traps. First, they were heavy, an early benefit of that was the upper body strength gained, which helped make him the captain of his school’s wrestling team. Having later considered the heaviness of the wet wood trap, the lower resistance of wire going through the water column and the durability of wire, a rigid wire mesh trap seemed a good idea. But metal in salt water would not have cut it without the last component. That was a new plastic, polyvinyl chloride (PVC), and it made all the difference. After getting out of the army in 1956, Jim and his brother started a business coating metal products in plastic-stethoscopes, plier handles, jumper cable handles, etc.

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