Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/982

 954

��Popular Science Monthly

��A Quick Creaser

AVERY convenient article for a household is apparatus for creasing trousers in a jiffy. The illustration shows a very light and easily operated device. It is shown in operation at the left. It clamps the trouser leg and is electrically heated by means of two

���Trousers can be pressed by electrical heat

coils of wire, running the full length of the apparatus, as shown at B, B. The clamp A clasps the trouser leg. Three springs as C, one at each end and one at the middle, furnish the pressure; D indicates the releasing handles.

By dampening the trouser leg with a wet sponge and applying this apparatus, a fine crease can be obtained in a jiffy. This apparatus can be applied to the back of the trouser leg as well as the front.

Making the Burglar Call the Police

AN invention soon to be installed in certain government buildings in the South, to make burglars and house- breakers themselves ring up the police calling for their arrest, has been worked out by Louis H. German, Louisville, Kentucky, as the sequel to a narrow escape he experienced from an intended robbery.

The system involves the automatic sending of the alarm from an instrument concealed in the room or building which has been broken into. This instrument may, for example, be a telephone con-

��cealed within a wooden cupboard. An elastic cord is fastened to the receiver (or other suitable alarm-sending ele- ment), and to the end of this short elastic cord is fastened a long wire or cord that is run through eyes that are fastened to the tops of doors and to window frames, and its further end hooked fast to the last eye in the end door or window. This wire is put in place by the owner or proprietor before he leaves the room. The telephone receiver hook is held in its place so as to give the alarm when he leaves. For this purpose, a cord is fastened to the hook and run through a hole in the wall to the outside, where it is fastened to a hook or nail.

When the proprietor opens the door, the elastic band attached to the receiver simply stretches without lifting the receiver from the hook, as it is held in place by the taut cord hooked outside the wall. Once he has closed the door and is outside, he proceeds to release this cord from its hook, so that it will slide through the wall inside. The next person who undertakes to open door or window will consequently stretch or strain the wire or cord extending across the doors so it will raise the receiver of the alarm-giving telephone from its hook, as it is no longer held down by the other cord.

In the daytime, the cord that protects the various doors and windows may be withdrawn and stored inside the cup-

���By means of this scheme every door and window may be guarded

board that conceals the alarm-sending telephone, and employees and visitors in the building will be unaware of the existence of the automatic burglar-alarm.

�� �