Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1898-05-17

e~sss-nAany OeFices for the Con
 venience of Sleepy Heads-one to Thwar,
 the Grave Robber.
 Psychologists assert that civilized hu.
 man beings arc growing more absent.
 minded. The average man of intelli. gence today is not alert, not so con.
 sc1ous of his immediate environments
 as he was a century ago. He does more
 thinking than he did then, and great.
 CT part of his business in life is left to
 the purely mechanical brain functions.
 The inventors, always step ahead of
 the requirements of the times are al.
 ready at work devising contrivances to
 summon absent attention. One of the
 latest of these is bracelet that has an
 alarm watch attached to it. The wearer.
 haVlng an engagement at certain hour
 sets the watch, and when the time ar- f1yes little needle point bricks her arm and reminds her of the duty.
 At the patent office a large class of inventions is comprised under the head
 ot alarms ''-these being machines by which persons who otherwise would not think are made to think. The average individual is obliged, however unwill- lngly, to get up at Q certain time in the morning To provide for this require. ment many ingenious persons have ape piled their talents to the production of eontrivanees for awakening people and compelling them to arise. There is a kind of bedstead, for example, which holds its mattress in frame that is re. tained in the normal position by catch.
 At the proper hour the catch, operated by a clockWori mechanism, loses it's grip, and the mattress frame becomes vertical instead of horizontal, throwing sleepy head cut upon the floor.
 There is another. sort of bed which lets the head of the sleepy person drop when getting up time arrives, one end Of the mattress frame collapsing. But one of the queerest of the patented methods of waking people up involves the employment of tin pan and a weight hung by a cord. When the hands of clock reach a certain point the weight is released and falls upon the pan, making a direful racket. An other oddity is frame from which are suspended a number of corks. During the night it is lowered gradually by oloclwork mechanism until at the proper hour and minute the dangling corks begin to bob against the nose and face Of the sleeper. Of course he wakes up. The most obvious advantage of these sleep alarms is that they render anxiety on the part of the sleeper un- so far as rising is concerned. He can snooze undisturbed by the neees. sity of watching himself.
 Hayseed visitors i'll the city will in- Sist on blowing out the gas notwith- all the newspaper jokes on the subject, To provide against such aeci- dents, Q citizen of Ashland, Wis, has invented little apparatus that is in- tended to be attached to every gas fix. ture in hotel. The breath of person who attempts to blow out the gas tits a delicately balanced e1ectrode and closes a circuit, giving an alarm in the office. Another kind of alarm, patented by Chicago man, notifies the house. holder of escaping gas. If you are afraid of pickpoekets, you can obtain by wearing a small machine that makes big disturbance in case anybody tries to put his hand into your pocket.
 Even after death you may find alarms ] service. If a grave robber comes along, a torpedo placed in the coffin for hat purpose will blow him to smither- 9ens. Supposing that the disturbance wakes you to life again, a cloekwork will start bell to ringing, while a red flag runs up to the top of jhe tombstone, giving notice that resurrection is desired. Speak ng of waking up suggests mention of ,ome odd contriyances for doing neces- ary things before getting out of bed in he morning One of these, patented by lazy Vermonter, enables one to turn )n the draft of a stove or furnace and hen turn over for a supplementary nooze. This, however, is a primitive compared with the inven. ion of a resident of Providence which provides for the feeding of whole sta ,leful of live stock at daybreak. MT. Sleepy Head simply turns on his pillow md jerks a cord, which opens valve Il the stable and lets down the requisite luantity of feed into a trough.
 There are quite number of inven- ions for lighting the fire in the morn ng without getting out of bed. They re all operated by cloekwork. The best f them is credited to an Illinois genius. clock is set for certain time, and yhen the proper minute is reached the mechanism "throws" a lever, which raws a match across q piece of sandpa.