TO END CRIME.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 170, 20 July 1935, Page 4 (Supplement)

TO END CRIME.

HUMAN ELECTRICITY. 3URGLARS SOUND ALARM. ROBBERIES ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE. In a London City office there is a bell whose peals may, in the near future, sound the death-knell of burglary in England. It is the electric voice of Mr. O. A. Alexandra's amazing new burglar alarm —a device which would make bank robbery impossible and enable householders and business men to snap their fingers at Bill Sikcs. Near the wall in Mr. Alexandra's private room stood a small safe. "Just walk over towards that safe," said the inventor to a pressman, He did so. Just as lie got to within a yard of the safe a horrible din broke out above his head. A bell whose tongue could not be stilled shrieked out a long, sustained warning. And the awful clamour persisted until he stepped out of range of the invisible current that worked tliis uncanny alarm. "By means of my invention," said Mr. Alexandra, "it will be possible for an official at Scotland Yard—or in Scotland itself for that matter! —to know, by glancing at an indicator over his desk, the exact second at which the Bank of England has been entered by robbers. Wonder Machine. "An employer—say a bank manager— who suspects that his room may be entered by some dishonest person, and who does not want that person to know that he is being watched, can kebp an 'invisible eye' upon the marauder. He can so arrange things that, 011 the very instant that iiis room is entered, an electric indicator will register the visit.

"I hope to be able to show that by mentis of my invention organised crime can be reduced to n minimum."

Mr. Alexandra's device is not a light ray. It is a wonder machine which harnesses the electricity emanating from the human body. Jn a glass case in his room the inventor has a little string of different coloured electric lamps.

When you approach within a few yards of this glass case—even though you should merely stroll past the wall of the room in the corridor outside—these lamps immediately flash up brilliantly, dazzling you with their light through the glass panels of the door.

For years Mr. Alexandra, with his partner, Mr. R. A. Lovibond—both skilled electrical engineers—have been sccrctly working on their machines.

"My light, and my alarm, can bo used for scores of different purposes," Mr. Alexandra explained. "Already I have been overwhelmed with requests from business firms for permission to use the light for advertising campaigns."

A Scotsman, short, stockily built and spare of words, Mr. Alexandra spent 15 years in the United States and Canada. During the war he took part in submarine and airship construction on a large scale. Soon his name may be one that the criminals of the London underworld will fear. He will, if the Government takes up his invention, become the means of striking terror into the heart of even the most daring bandit.

A skeleton was produced at an inquest at Wells, Somerset, Mental Hospital, to show the injuries to Thomas Rowlands, aged 41, a rag sorter, who died in the institution. Thirteen of Rowlands' ribs were broken, and his legs, arms and chest were bruised when he was admitted from the Frome l'oor Law Institution the previous week. The jury returned an open verdict, adding that they were unanimously agreed that Rowlands died from injuries received on the night of his detention at Frome. Attendants were unable to explain how ho received them.