THINGS TO COME

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22502, 4 December 1947, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

GLIMPSEJN PARIS INVENTORS’ EXHIBITION PARIS, Nov. 25. With even necessities of life in painfully short supply, Parisians have been tantalising themselves by going to the annual inventors’ fair to stare at models of fantastic inventions that are not likely to bo produced industrially for years to come. Dreams of lazy mornings in bed were conjured up in many a Parisian s imagination by a gadget which, attached to an alarm clock automatically switched on electric light, coffee pot, toaster, radio, hot water heater, electric kettle and electric razor. But the dreamers turned away with a sigh, for under the severe electricity rationing programme they have not enough current to run these appliances, even if coffee did not cost £3 a lb, on the black market, and an electric razor £lO upwards, toaster, the meagre 200-gram bread ration has made many a Frenchman hesitate to risk burning bread in a toaster. Flood of Patents As if seeking deliberately. to tease the hard-pressed Frenchman, inventors this year have been more creative than ever" before. M. Henri Boix, president of the Fair, said; “We have more than 000 inventions this year as against 300 last year. The war and hard times seem to have stimulated inventive abilities. Invention seems to have become a form or escapism, almost like going to the cinema.” , But although spectators may have suffered pangs of wistful envy in surveying the hundreds of unobtainable devices designed to make life uioie comfortable, the Inventors _ seemed to be having a wonderful time. Most pasesd the time in constant tinkering with their brain children, quite oblivious of the shuffling crowds. Perhaps the most ambitious, and certainly the most poetically advertised of the inventions was a vehicle whose inventor, Collinchard Mystyl,. of Paris, claimed could travel at high speeds over any sort of terrain. A series of retractable legs with appendages resembling iron feet projected from its wheels.

Go Anywhere

Mystyl, an intense-looking dark-eyed young man, explained; "The ideal vehicle must be capable of moving fast over unprepared ground. Such a vehicle saves the cost of building roads; and satisfies the ancient human craving to go to some spot where no one has ever been. ‘‘My invention can be adapted to buses, private cars and even trains. It will cross ditches, penetrate forests, wallow through mud with the smoothness and security of a luxury railroad train. It can be adapted to anything that rolls on the face of the earth in peace or in war. It is impervious to all obstacles from dust and mud to boulders and tree trunks.” Other interesting contrivances were:—

A sun lamp guaranteed by its inventor to cure everything from head colds to cancer. A motor cycle which folded up and fitted into a normalsized suitcase. A device for escaping from submarines. New types of unbreakable glass. An electric comb. Complicated wall safes, and some tricky devices for locking doors. An automatic watch-cleaner sat side by side with a cigarette lighter, as big as a man. This proffered a light by means of a photo-electric cell as soon as a packet of cigarettes was taken from a spectator’s pocket.