FIRE PREVENTION.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXV, Issue 32, 9 February 1915, Page 3

FIRE PREVENTION.

An ingenious contrivance for the transmission of prompt, and accurate notice of the outbreak of fir© has been invented by a New Zealander, in the. • person of Mr M. Moloney, late electrical mechanician to the Post., and Telegraph Department. Metal tobes. in which are enclosed harder metal rods, adjusted and-, fixed at, one end to the tubes, are placed so that thej penetrate to the various rooms in a building, or to the different parts of. a ship, or wherever, the instrument is being used. . The temperature, acting on one of the tubes, operates a trigger, and makes a contact in a closed metal box at the other end The instrument, called the “Vigilant automatic fire alarm, can be adjusted so finely that the mere warmth of the. hand in, contact with the tube will set the hells ringing, or it can he fixed to operate an alarm at any temperature short of that which .' ill melt the metal. A central switchhoard is placed, for instance, in the captain’s cabin of a ship, and, on a fire occurring in any part, or on the temperature arising above, a certainpoint to which the mechanism has been adjusted, a bell rings at the central board, and, By an ingenious arrangement, tbe exact location of tbc trouble is graphically registered. Many authorities, including Superintendent Napier, of the Dunedin o Fire Brigade, and ’Superintendent Frck, of the Christchurch Fire Brigade, have expressed a high opinion of the invention, which is being- installed, amongst • other places, in tho new Government buildings at Christchurch, and in tho vessels of a big shipping company, InMr Moloney for the company which controls the device. Tho system may also ho used, to detect and register an undesirably high, temperature in a baker’s oven, for instance, or in the ward of a hospital, where such a state of affairs might have dangerous consequences.