AN INGENIOUS INVENTION.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6091, 31 January 1898, Page 2

AN INGENIOUS INVENTION.

The sphere of automatic machinery haß been extended by a Victorian inventor bo as to embrace the telephone of commerce. Dr F. J. Clendinnen, a medioal gentleman whose name does not appear for the firat time as the originator of ingenious mechanical contrivances, has just perfected an idea calculated to render the bureau telephone capable of looking after its own finances. It is (says the Age) but another rung in the coin-in-the-slot ladder. The new bureau telephone oan be placed anywhere accessible to the public. A person desiring to use it places the requisite fee in the slot, and can then talk to the exchange. Until the machine is satisfied that the caller secures the subscriber he is in searoh of, it places the coin in a "suspense" account, but, the desired conversion actually completed, the caller hooks the transmitter and down goes the coin into a well, accessible only to a departmental officer, or some of the penny-in-the-slot burglars who are in evidence just now. If the exchange fails to obtain a response from the subscriber who is called, the switch operator rings from the exchange, and the coin jumps out of the automatic machine, to be carried away by its owner. The Postal Department have agreed to permit a trial to be made with the machine