Amusing Possibilities.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLII, Issue 20, 19 May 1909, Page 60

Amusing Possibilities.

One of these days there will be n* more keys. An inventor of Denver, Colorado, has made a lock that opens on the gramophone principle—that is to say, by speaking into it; and since it is obviously easier to whisper a secret into a key-hole than to find the key thaff fits it and go through the usual performance; and since the inventor claim* that this is the safest form of lock yet’ devised, no great stretch of imagination is required to see keys as obsolete a* flint-and-steel, and the curious but pleasing picture of doors, safes, and boxes opening to command just like th* cave of the Forty Thieves. There will be difficulties, little annoyances, of course; but then inconveniences attaeH to keys, as everybody knows who has lost one. To begin with, there ia th* "key-phrase.” This is the phrase that opens the loek, and a peculiarly violent brain-storm would certainly result on standing outside the front door in th* the pouring rain at an unfortunate hour of the morning and cooing into the keyhole every imaginable (and some unprintable) phrase but the right one. That is one little trifle. Then there i* the fact that these ingenious locks will onlv respond to vibrations of the voice that exactly coincide with the vibrations recorded in the mechanism. On* sees and, appreciates and a4* mires the inventor’s cleverness here. D» the case of a safe the burglar will have to study voice-vibration and to study hard if he is to get any return for hi* night’s work. But the thing so to speak, both ways. What will b* done when the safe-owner has a eold? WiR he go mad in front of his safe, or will he have it blown up with dynamite and tell them to get up from th* cellar the dear old antiquated loek-and-key safe that his grandfather used? These are the problems that musf b* wrestled with when estimating the happiness that posterity is to enjoy from all the marvels it is going to have.