A Flit gun is a hand-pumped insecticide

Insecticide

An insecticide is a pesticide used against insects. They include ovicides and larvicides used against the eggs and larvae of insects respectively. Insecticides are used in agriculture, medicine, industry and the household. The use of insecticides is believed to be one of the major factors behind...

 sprayer

Sprayer

A sprayer is a device used to spray a liquid.In agriculture, a sprayer is a piece of equipment that spray nozzles to apply herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers to agricultural crops...

 used to dispense Flit

Flit

Flit is the brand name for an insecticide.The original product, launched in 1923 and mainly intended for killing flies and mosquitoes, was mineral oil based and manufactured by the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey before the company, now part of ExxonMobil, renamed itself first Esso and later...

, a brand-name insecticide widely used against flies

Fließ

Fließ is a municipality in the Landeck district and is located5 km south of Landeck on the upper course of the Inn River. It has 9 hamlets and was already populated at the roman age; the village itself was founded around the 6th century. After a conflagration in 1933 Fließ was restored more...

 and mosquito

Mosquito

Mosquitoes are members of a family of nematocerid flies: the Culicidae . The word Mosquito is from the Spanish and Portuguese for little fly...

es between 1928 and the mid-1950s. Although named after the well-known brand, "Flit gun" became a generic name for this type of dispenser.

Design description

A Flit gun consists of a pneumatic tube with a hand-operated plunger to force air through an air nozzle in the front. Below the front of the pneumatic tube is a secondary tubular container designed to hold a liquid insecticide, this reservoir set at 90 degrees to the pneumatic tube. The insecticide reservoir traditionally has a screw-cap for pouring additional insecticide into the container, plus an internal hose that feeds from the fluid reservoir up to a tip placed just forward of the air nozzle of the pneumatic tube. This arrangement mists or atomizes the insecticide into a spray when the pneumatic tube handle is pumped, without the requirement for any compressed propellants to be stored.
The basic pneumatic tube portion is similar in operation to a Super Soaker

Super Soaker

Super Soaker is a brand of recreational water gun, first sold in 1990 by Larami and now produced by Hasbro under the Nerf brand. Invented by Lonnie Johnson on November 13, 1989, the first Super Soaker, the Super Soaker 50, was originally called the Power Drencher...

 or a hand-powered grease gun

Grease gun (tool)

A grease gun is a common workshop and garage tool used for lubrication. The purpose of the grease gun is to apply lubricant through an aperture to a specific point, usually on a grease fitting. The channels behind the grease nipple lead to where the lubrication is needed. The aperture may be of a...

, but propelling air rather than water or grease.

Timeline

Once commonly found in households, hand-operated Flit guns have been replaced as insecticide dispensers by aerosol spray

Aerosol spray

Aerosol spray is a type of dispensing system which creates an aerosol mist of liquid particles. This is used with a can or bottle that contains a liquid under pressure. When the container's valve is opened, the liquid is forced out of a small hole and emerges as an aerosol or mist...

 cans and fallen out of common use. The design was originally created for rural outdoor use in the early 20th century, and is rarely seen anymore, aside from in reruns of pre-World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

cartoons and a few early movies.