REMARKABLE INVENTION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20762, 3 January 1931, Page 8 (Supplement)

REMARKABLE INVENTION.

HUMAN BODY AS A SWITCH.

A Lancashire man, Mr. Clifford Stanworth. has given, in London, a demonstration of an apparatus which is set in motion morely by the approach of a human being. Electric lights are switched on automatically as a person enters the room in which they are, and a shop window is flooded with light by anyone just looking in. The apparatus will act as a burglar alarm, ring a bell, or set an electric motor to work if anyone moves near to it.

Mr. Stanworth, who is 24 years of age, adjusted his invention to a large showcase fitted with ordinary electric lights. " Walk up to tho case," ho said. When a man approached within two feet all the lights were suddenly lighted. When ho moved back the lights went out. It did not matter from whatever anglo the showcase was approached, as soon as any person' was within two feet of it • the lights went on. "It is extremely simple,in system, like all inventions,' said Mr. Stanworth. " The human body has electricity in it. This affects tho wire as soon as one is within a certain range, which I can vary from a few inches to several yards. A very delicate instrument turns tho switch." The invention looks rather like a small portable wireless set. Ono claim is that it will halve tho electric light bills for shops, because the lights will be on only when they are needed. FOOD TESTS ON INFANT MICE. New information regarding right and wrong times for eating certain foods is forecast in experiments on diets of mice by Dr. E. C. MacDowell and C. G. MacDowell at the Carnegie Institution at Cold Spring Harbour, New York. Dr. MacDowell found that most baby mice do not increase in weight during their first two weeks as rapidly as in the period preceding . birth. Ho thought this discrepancy strange and discovered that it was due to the fact that tho average mouse has too many brothers and sisters. By giving the young mice more mother's milk he induced them to grow nearly as rapidly after birth as before and double their weight at fourteen days. But the added milk was effective only for two weeks. After that the rate of increase on milk fell away until it was revived by changing to solid food. Some mice, Dr. MacDowell says, have " especially good mothers," which continue to nurse their young and delay the shift to solid food. Even for these baby mice the milk loses its effectiveness after the second week and the extra maternal care only shows growth until after weaning. "There can be no question," Dr. MacDowell says, " but that a new phase of life is inaugurated at tho end of tho second week by the eating of the first solid food. Further experiments will be required before attempting to say what is tho primary factor that leads to this break; what initiates this natural process of weaning." INTERESTING RADIUM CLOCK. Dr. Frank E. Simpson, of New York, who has a radium clock in his surgery which has not lost a fraction of a second in four years, explains its mechanism. He says it has an invisible speck of radium, enclosed in glass, which gives off energy. Two delicate leaves of metal are suspended like tho prongs of a tuning fork on either side of the particle of radium. As they are charged by tho radium they repel each other and separate until they come in -contact with a negative terminal. Then they discharge and fall back to the original position (o bo charged again. He says the clock may run a little slow after a couple of thousand years, but it will never have to be wound. ENGINEER SOLVES A PROBLEM. A Sicilian engineer has invented a very ingenious device for tho purpose of safeguarding submarines. Luminous buoys are attached by cords to the side of tho submarine which will float if tho vessel sinks. By winding the corns into a metal cylinder which can be let down to the sunken vessel it will be possible to haul it up to tho surface. The cylinder, when it comes into contact with the submarine, is automatically attached to it by means of self-acting hooks.