Safe-blowers Using Astronauts’ Lights

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30406, 3 April 1964, Page 11

Safe-blowers Using Astronauts’ Lights

(Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.)

SYDNEY, April 2. The latest gadget selling in Sydney these days is a tiny torch or, technically speaking, lamp, designed for American astronauts. A detective discovered a few days ago that cracksmen were using the micro-lights. An underworld character told him the lamp was the

best instrument burglars had found in years, he said. They could shine its- rays on door locks and safe locks without arousing the alarm of outsiders. The torch—or lamp—throws a thin but powerful beam which is almost impossible to detect by a watchman or policeman passing a building in which a burglar is operating. It does not use a battery or bulb, and is said to last a lifetime because it is wired with platinum and has a selfregenerating energy cell. Designed by an American company for space travel computer circuits, it has been used in space by American astronauts and in rockets. For civilian use, the lamp has been designed as a key beam and has been on sale in Australia for only a few weeks. It is contained in a plastic holder which fits on a key and, when squeezed, lights up and focuses on the keyhole into which the key is being plunged. The beam comes through a lens about a sixteenth of an inch in diameter.