INVENTIVE BRAINS

Waikato Times, Volume 112, Issue 18808, 2 December 1932, Page 10

INVENTIVE BRAINS

HUMOROUS RECOLLECTIONS. An Australian sensation of about 25 years ago, when an inventor named Brown was imprisoned in connection with a scheme for changing sweet poiaiocs into gold, was recalled by Mr W. Aekliuul in his address on “inventions and Fabrications” to the Wellington Rotary Club. Brown, said Mr Ackland, was a man with a long while beard, and had endless ideas on all sorts of subjects. Backers were found for bis scheme for changing potatoes into gold, but “when the potatoes refused to go on the gold standard,’’ as Mr Ackland put it, Brown got into legal trouble, and be died in prison. However, the inventor. in Mr Aekland's opinion, was more mad than dishonest.

Prior lo Die .scheme which landed him in prison Brown called at Mr Aekiand's oltire. in Sydney, where lie worked for a brilliant engineer for help in a .scheme that was lo obtain him £IOO,OOO. Brown intended to

ascend aj) miles from the earth in a balloon, having calculaied Unit the attraction of tlie earth would cease at 11 1 a! heigh!, lie would remain at that heigh I while the earth went round, and at the end of 27 hours lie would descend on sighting St. Paul's Cathedral. The postal authorities were so plagued by the inventor that they promised him blob,0(10 when lie landed Ihe mails in London in 27 hours. The slumblmg-block of Hie scheme was Ihal, having ascended la where gravitation no longer opernled ihe inventor had not thought that he would not he able to descend again! Another inventor proposed lo propel a ship with six windmills on each side of Ihe vessel, supplemented by a small nit engine ami screw. The oil engine was In give the start, amt Ihe motion would make Co propeller turn round, and the fash..” the prapeller went the faster the windmills would !urn. The speed contemplated was so great, that the inventor was frightened that the .-hip might l!\ away, so he thought of putting daps along the side of the vessel to act as brakes. Mr Aekland said that when tungsten filament was llrsl used in electric light globes il was so fragile that the percentage of breakages was en umious. When in Dunedin man\ years ago he stored cases of these bulbs in ii storehouse near His Majesty's Theatre. Bland lloif was pla>ing in i melodrama in tine tlieaire, and one night when Mr \cklaml attended the play the curtain went up mi a scene showing a ship being worked a! ms-

side a wharf. The wharf labourers were hanging cases about, and the cases contained his lamps. That piece orT<vojism. cost Bland Holt £oOU.