RADIO RAILWAY.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20540, 15 February 1935, Page 5

RADIO RAILWAY.

A Train Which Obeys the Human Voice. FASCINATING MODELS. A radio railway which will start and stop at the word of command was among the many wonders of the Schoolboys’ Own Exhibition at Westminster, England, recently, writes the “ News-Chronicle.” It is one of the inventions displayed by Major Raymond Phillips, an engineer whose models are fascinating eager crowds of grown-ups as well as schoolboys. A voice shouted “ Sixty! ” into an instrument something i like a microphone, and model trains on a table yards away began to move. Then the call was ‘“ Stop! ” and they stopped. According to Major Phillips it is all quite simple. “ What happens,” he says, “is that the electricity generated by the human body passes through a number of delicate relays, into a wireless transmitter radiating wireless waves which control the trains.” He showed his “ humanoscope,” a queer-looking contraption which measures human will-power. It is a sort of celluloid bell with a point at the top from which half a dozen pendulums dangle. You hold a glass rod in either hand, well away from the pendulums, and you “ will ” one of them towards the glass rod. If your will-power is strong the pendulum swings sharply up. If it is weak or mediocre the pendulum makes a slight vacillating movement in the “ willed ” direction. Another uncanny machine measures the electrical vitality of the body. The “ victim,” firmly grasping two metal handles, stands before the apparatus. His quantum of electricity is registered on a chart. Children, says the inventor, register more than adults. Boys have more vitality than girls. And—good news for the not-so-slim—fat people radiate more energy than those with sylphlike figures.