SHYEST MAN IN WOULD.

Huntly Press and District Gazette, Volume XVIII, 13 November 1931, Page 4

SHYEST MAN IN WOULD.

Every time you pass one of those familiar red fire alarms in the streets, think of Alfred Charles Brown, the shy inventor, who was buried at Lewisham recently. Alfred Charles Brown was an English Edison whom nobody knew. He shunned the limelight so much that this is the first complete story that has been told of his enormous achievements. Invented the street fire alarm; erected the first synchronised clocks in England; invented a time-keeping clock before the country was ready for it; made the first ambulance posts for London. Just before his death he had plans for a “wound-finder” that would have emitted a noise when near a bullet embedded in the flesh. He made sensitive sound detectors in the war which he claimed would have located the position of Big Bertha. He was a friend and coworker on telephones with Edison and Bell. His inventions saved thousands of lives. But when his synchronised clocks were installed at Folkestone he was much annoyed because they wanted to put his name on the dials “in big letters,” and he was too shy. Miss Martha Brown, his daughter, and a close friend, Mr Abbott, told me, writes a representative of the Sunday Express, the story of this great but modest old man. He made a fortune out of alarms—and spent it on further experiments and on lavish gifts. He was seventy-two, and if he had lived another ten years, they say, he would have died in poverty. As a young employee of a telegraph firm he walked to work and spent his meal money on books of philosophy and experiments. He was horrified at the tardy arrival of the brigades at fires and the loss of life. He thought and thought, and suddenly the idea of his alarm posts came to him. There was no opposition, and he began to put them up in the city. At first people were afraid to use them. A fire would break out, but the people would go and look for a policeman and ask him to smash the glass of the alarm. Sometimes the policeman was not over-keen himself and would say it was not his affair. There are hundreds of these red posts in London streets now, and every one has been adjusted separately by Mr. Brown himself. You can read his name on the back.

All his life his fear of fires persisted. Just before his death he stood looking across Blackheath at the glare of an East-end first. Trembling, he exclaimed, “Will the engines get there in time? Have they got the people out, do you think?” The late Lord Rosebery wanted to help him bring forward some of his patents. But Mr. Brown said, “I should be out of place among all those big pots.” If anybody praised his work he blushed and grew confused. He was extremely generous. Recently he met an old tramp on Black heath.

“You haven’t had a good meal for days, old chap, have you?" he said. Then he emptied his pockets, notes and all, into the man’s hands! Relatives used to leave their purses at home because he would give all they had to needy strangers he met in the street. He gave pound notes as tips and left half-crowns for waitresses.