TERRORS FOR CRIMINALS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21792, 5 May 1934, Page 3 (Supplement)

TERRORS FOR CRIMINALS

INVENTORS' GOOD SERVICE FIGHTING BANDIT MENACE ASSISTANCE TO POLICE The story of two men whose invention holds terrors for criminals all over Britain is told by Mr. M. H. Watts in the Sunday Chronicle: By their patient research and experiment they have provided the police forces with the means of checking and eliminating that modern criminal—the motor bandit. The men are the pioneers of the police patrol wireless telephony set— Mr. S. R. Wright, head of the Police Wireless Department at Stockport, and Mr. J. Croysdale, his friend and fel-low-inventor. Through their work, often'carried out in the early hours of the morning, these two men, who have hitherto remained anonymous and unknown to the general public, have given the police their most effective weapon against the modern criminal. In spite of incessant hammering and vibration on inotor-cycles and vans 15 hours' a day seven days a week, the five sets supplied to the Stockport police have failed to rdceive only 18 of the 380 messages broadcast, through faults, in a year's use. Here is the story of the crowth of this remarkable invention. Five years ago these two men decided to make a portable wireless telephone set tor the police. Mr. Croysdale, a young analytical chemist, experimented on Ilkley Moor with a set strapped round his waist. Mr. Wright, a Bradford wireless engineer, tested in his home the most advanced theories of wireless telephony and the like. Mr. Croysdale then went to Manchester. But a few weeks later Mr. Wright got a post in Stockport, and their experiments , began afresh. In 1930 a set which went inside, a _ •»()- cigar box was evolved. This, the first tvirelo'ss telephony set in England, was tested by various police authorities. But they soon abandoned the p«cketset idea as unsatisfactory. After two .years of research the men designed the new set which the Stockport police—the first force in Britain to use wireless telephony—have worked with such success. . ~ Mr. Wright has installed. Iror the Edinburgh police, the largest arm inos up-to-date police wireless telephone equipment in Britain.