Making the Burglar Chase Himself 



REASONING that the easiest wax- 

 to dispose of a burglar is to scare 

 him with the thing he most fears, 

 and that is a pistol, a Chicago man, R. 

 C. Mayberry, has devised an apparatus 

 which will fire off cartridges and do the 

 scaring automatically at the very mo- 

 ment the burglar begins work. 



The burglar unwittingly sets off the 

 contrivance himself and does his own 

 frightening, as it were. This is accom- 

 plished through the aid of numerous 

 push-buttons or other switches, located 

 at points along the path a burglar must 

 pursue in entering a building. Thus, 

 the raising of a window will close one 

 of the switches and cause the contriv^ance 

 to operate. If, once inside, the burglar 

 should stumble over a string stretched 

 across his path or step on a loose 

 board, a fusillade will surely 

 greet him. As soon as he 

 operates one of the numerous 

 switches, his presence is prompt- 

 ly heralded far and wide by 

 powder, smoke, and noise. 



The device is in part mechani- 

 cal and in part electrical in 

 nature. Housed in a small box 

 about five inches square and 

 ten inches long, it is preferably 

 suspended from or attached to 

 the ceiling of a room. Hence, 

 it is out of the way and less 

 accessible to would-be tamperers. 



The mechanical part of the 

 apparatus consists of a small 

 clockwork mechanism which 

 rings a high-pitched bell on the 

 principle of an alarm-clock. The 

 slow unwinding of the spring as 

 it operates the bell, causes a 

 cam-like contrivance to revolve, 

 at each successive turn releasing 

 a firing-pin on one of five .44 

 blank cartridges located in a 

 metal bar nearby. 



The electrical part of the 

 mechanism comes into play in 

 starting. The burglar's closing 

 one of the switches causes cur- 

 rent from dry-batteries, located 

 within the box, to be sent 

 through a small solenoid. This 



operates a small bolt-lock and per- 

 mits the bottom door of th'e box to 

 drop down, at the same time starting 

 up the clockwork with its resulting 

 exploding of the cartridges and ringing 

 of the alarm-bell. As the bottom door 

 drops down smoke from the cartridges 

 escapes. 



The burglar either departs before he 

 has had any opportunity to secure loot, 

 or else leaves so many clues behind in 

 taking his ill-gotten goods along that 

 his ready apprehension later is an easy 

 matter. The robber has no means of 

 knowing, of course, whether the shots 

 are coming from a mechanical contri- 

 vance or from an outraged householder's 

 revolver. He never stops to inves- 

 tigate. 



Five blank cartridges are fired in rapid succession 

 when the window is opened 



881 



