BLUSHING UNSEEN

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20012, 1 December 1927, Page 10

BLUSHING UNSEEN

COLS MEDAL INVENTION NEGLECTED TRIFLE OF THE CROWD. LONDON, Nov. 14. Mr O. C. Johnson, of Maybury Road, Woking, is announced to be the gold medallist of the International Exhibition of Inventors at the Central Hail, Westminster. His exhibit was in appearance the p.ainest andj least expensive on view. Resembling a flat 2ib. weight in shop? the invention is intended to repine the ball system in coatroliing the bow 01 water into cisterns. Its cost is about 2s only. ‘•Few people troubled to ask about this small miniature water cistern. It stood there neglected, while visitors homed past to gaze at t‘he more attractive models,” an official of the exhibition said. “But there was one person, Professor A. M. Low, the scientist, who did? not pass by. He pauseu to exclaim, ‘This is a winner.’ ” Mr Johnson, the son of a Woking restaurant proprietor, comes of a Leee« family, and is 27. In his boyhood he spent his spare time making ingenious devices, and after he left school he devoted his whole time to inventing and designing. His first real success was at the International Exhibition of Inventions in 1925, when he received the silver medial for a compressed-air flushing apparatus. “I have to invent,” he said, in an interview, ‘‘just the same as some people cannot stop themselves from wandering round the world.”