Class of 2024

In the professional pest control industry, few figures loom as large as Austin Enos “Brick” Kness. This innovative janitor-turned-inventor created a product that would transform the industry and establish a century-long legacy of pest management solutions.

Kness was born in Chadwick, Ill., in 1889, the second of eight children. During his childhood, the family moved around doing farm work, finally settling near Monticello, Iowa. After completing the eighth grade, 15-year-old Kness quit school, left home and headed West. He got by as a farmhand and even as a traveling professional wrestler.

In his early 20s, Kness worked in logging camps in Washington and Oregon, becoming a barber and cutting the hair of his fellow loggers. He also labored in orchards and dairy farms, and trained in Omaha, Neb., as an automotive repairman.

As a written family history recalls, the various places Kness worked inspired him to build tools to assist him in any tasks at hand. He built “a boat powered by a vehicle; a light bulb extractor for high ceilings; a one-wheel trailer;a rural mailbox; a garden hoe…
a contour plow and harrow; a left-hand turn signaling device for an automobile, a lift box on the three-point hitch of a tractor” and many other innovations.

But by age 25, Kness was back at the family farm, settling down with his new bride, Bessie. They had three daughters and three sons, but Bessie died nine years later of influenza. Their baby was barely six weeks old, and their oldest child was 7.

To make matters worse, the farm was having a bad year in 1924 and Kness had to take a job to make ends meet. He was hired as a custodian at Audubon High School in Audubon, Iowa.

In this new position, Kness faced a persistent mouse problem. He was frustrated with the time and labor involved in setting numerous traps around the school, emptying all the full traps, cleaning up the mess and starting over again, day in and day out.

Kness fell back on his tinkering habit and engineered an ingenious device cobbled from everyday items: a square oil can, an empty Tuxedo Tobacco tin, a spring from a curtain rod and the wooden base of a crate. The first night he set his trap, he captured five mice. He was elated, as were the teachers, his friends and family. They encouraged him to take out a U.S. patent on the trap, which he was granted in 1930.

This trap could capture multiple rodents without needing to be reset — and was the first iteration of what became the Ketch-All Multiple Catch Mousetrap that is still in use today.