I came across some correspondence with my dad in about 1978.
He was describing a contraption that he had built in order to satisfy my mother
that they were secure at night when sleeping with the front door open , only
the screen door shut to prevent mosquitoes from entering the house. The screen door only had a small latch on it
so it was quite insecure. Anyone who
wanted to cut the screen, open the latch and get in the house could do so quite
easily. This is why my mother was
concerned for sleeping with this insecure situation. So, my dad decided to rig
up a security system based on parts that he had in the basement. The following paragraph is his writeup of the system that he had rigged up.
We left the front door open nights since your mother was afraid someone would cut the screen and reach in and unlock the door. So I fixed that. I mounted a mouse trap in the basement and put a piece of mica in as an insulator and fastened it to about 20 feet of monofilament line run out east front basement window to a pipe stuck in the ground and back to the west side of the porch. I have a flashlight in the hallway pointed to her bed and when they trip it, it shines in her face. The first night nothing happened but the next morning while we were eating breakfast a bird must have tripped it, thought it was a string good for her nest. Well so much for that.
Later, much later, I came across this story in the 1934 issue of an inventors magazine. It described an electric time switch made from a mouse trap, a clock and a knife switch. It reads: Made from a 5 cent mouse trap, a 20 cent knife switch, and a 60 cent alarm clock, this electric time switch will turn off signs, poultry house lights, or any other electric circuits at any hour. The bell hammer on the alarm clock trips the mouse trap trigger, which in turn flips open the knife switch. The rendition of the setup tells the whole story.
We left the front door open nights since your mother was afraid someone would cut the screen and reach in and unlock the door. So I fixed that. I mounted a mouse trap in the basement and put a piece of mica in as an insulator and fastened it to about 20 feet of monofilament line run out east front basement window to a pipe stuck in the ground and back to the west side of the porch. I have a flashlight in the hallway pointed to her bed and when they trip it, it shines in her face. The first night nothing happened but the next morning while we were eating breakfast a bird must have tripped it, thought it was a string good for her nest. Well so much for that.
Later, much later, I came across this story in the 1934 issue of an inventors magazine. It described an electric time switch made from a mouse trap, a clock and a knife switch. It reads: Made from a 5 cent mouse trap, a 20 cent knife switch, and a 60 cent alarm clock, this electric time switch will turn off signs, poultry house lights, or any other electric circuits at any hour. The bell hammer on the alarm clock trips the mouse trap trigger, which in turn flips open the knife switch. The rendition of the setup tells the whole story.
Think about this: Hardware stores were accessible to buy switches, but likely there were no timer switches. Now one can buy any number of timer switches so that systems can be asssembled from readily available parts--but not in 1934, so creativity filled the gap and parts at hand were used.
I wonder if my dad had seen this story in the inventors magazine and it gave him the idea on how to create this security switch, or was he just creative with parts at hand?
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