NEW INVENTIONS

Taranaki Daily News, 8 February 1935, Page 14

NEW INVENTIONS

EXPERIMENTS IN LONDON, London, January 2. Two automatic devices to make the little things of life less worrying are now being tried in London, says the industrial correspondent of the Daily Express. The Post Office is responsible for one, and the London Passenger Transport Board for the other. Post Office engineers have designed an apparatus for signalling the length of a trunk call. The same device may also be used for local calls. Instead of the operator “butting in” with an announcement that three minutes are up, or six minutes are up, this new device will produce three “pips” similar to those used by broadcasting stations in sending out their time signal. The device has been completed and is now undergoing a practical test at Post Office headquarters. The authorities are anxious to make the device foolproof before wholesale manufacture starts. The second device is designed to eliminate the possibility of any mistake in change on London omnibuses. The London Passenger Transport Board are negotiating with the inventors and manufacturers, a Swedish .firm, for the introduction to England of an automatic machine which .will, it is claimed, produce a ticket and the exact change in return for any coin put into a slot.

If you want a 2d. ticket and push a half-crown into a slot, the ticket and 2s 4d will be returned to you. Arguments over change will disappear. Conductors will remain, however. Their job will be that of “travelling policemen.” Someone must see that the slot machines are used by all passengers. Efforts are being made to obtain a license for the manufacture of the apparatus in Britain.