Andy Strube is the central character in an invention-themed editorial in today’s Lancaster Intelligencer Journal/New Era. He’s being  compared to other great American inventors. Bravo, Andy Strube!

The invention bug

The Conestoga wagon. The Pennsylvania rifle. Andy Strube’s stink bug trap.

All are inventions that come from Lancaster County. The earliest Conestoga wagons were built in Conestoga around 1750. These prairie schooners (they were built to resemble boats) were instrumental in transporting people and their valuables across the continent.

The Pennsylvania long rifle predates the Conestoga wagon. Martin Meylin smithed it in his workshop in Willow Street in 1719.

Strube is the latest in a long line of county inventors. His project, like many before it, was born of necessity. Strube was annoyed by the brown marmorated stink bugs that inundated the home he and his family were renting in Columbia.

The BMSBs, as they are known in entomology circles, are native to the Far East –China, Korea, Japan and Taiwan– but managed to find their way to Penn’s woods within the past 10-15 years.

They feast on fruits and vegetables, which makes them unmarketable. They infest homes, especially when the weather turns cold, and that makes them a pest of the first order.

So, Strube assembled a Rube Goldberg contraption, then modified it in ways to trap the critters.

To date, he’s sold roughly 10,000 traps, which makes this small businessman a worthy caretaker of Lancaster’s legacy of inventors.