The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1913-03-18
TO TEST AUTOMATIC
 STOPPING DEVICES

The New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad Company is pre- pairing to experiment with two of the many automatic stopping devices that
 were submitted to the Company in re- sponse to the offer of $1O,o00 by President MeI1en for one that would
 meet the reQuirem ents of the pecu- liar conditions governing the opera ton of a railway system such as the New Haven.
 selected for experiment from the 1,574 applications so far submitted are not in themselves perfect, but they con- tain certain features that command attention. The engineers of the Com pany reported Saturday that they are worthy of installation for trial in ac- tuaI operation; and they believe,
 through experiment and investigation, one of them may be raised to the
 state of efficiency required in the Company's specifications under which the competition is being held.
 Many of the devices submitted were ingenious, if not practical. Only about per cent of them were wor- thy of consideration, and of these on ly two emet with sufficient approval
 to warrant experiment at the expense of the Company. As an example of the futility of most of them, one com petitor wrote that his device would not constitute a source of danger to the passengers, but it's application | would probably kill the engineer and fireman, but it was to be used on the New Haven road that wouldn't
 make any difference. The device of
 another competitor consisted of
 heavy spring hook which it was claimed would automatically raise up from the roadbed when train pass l ed signal and catch cold of an axle on one of the cars, thereby stopping the train. Still others wrote accept ing the offer of President Mellen and
 demanding immediate payment of the S10.OOO.
 While in itself an automatic stop ping device is a simple mechanical invention, no practical solution of the
 problem of stopping a train automati- ca1ly on a railway system has yet been perfected. Most any mechanical en- giner could design a devfc that would stop a train under certain conditions and it is true that on some systems | such the Interborough subway in New York City effective devices have | been installed. But the problem so far as the New Haven road is concern ed is to find some method of convey ing information from the ground to the moving locomotive, and this method must be practicable in all conditions of weather
 When Presidnt Mel1en made his of fer for the <'best automatic device
 
 garding fixed signals the amount of
 work the contest would entail or the
 strange and varied suggestions that
 would be submitted were scarcely
 realized. Applications have been
 sent in from all over the world. Pan-
 anna, Porto Rico, Jamaica, Belgium,
 France, Ireland, Hawaiian Islands
 England, Scotland, Wales, Germany,
 and Denmark are some of the coun.
 tries represented in the contest The competitors represent nearly every
 walk of life, from elergymen to jail birds. Four of them are in jail and an equal number are inmates of in sane asylums. One has recently been indicted in Canada for attempting to sell stock in his stopping device com pany on false pretenees' and the United States Post office authorities have also been Investigating his stock selling scheme.
 One competitor forwarded to the | Company a revelation in which he | claims the information has been con veyed to him that he has been select 1 ed to convert the world.
 These applications entailed the ser vices of a special force of employees tc | take care of them. Besides answer 1 ing and Investigating the 4,574 appli- l cations and forwarding the competi- 1 tors circulars setting forth the rules of the contest, the Company obtain 1 ed copies of the patent records of stopping and signal devices on file at Washington. There were 1,483 such l appliances already patented. When i the new devices began to come in, it i was soon discovered that the competi- 1 tors had paid little or no attention to
 the instructions sent cut by the Com 1 pany and most of them had to be re- turned for further information.
 Under the conditions of the compe- 1 tition the Company agreed to assist a 1 competitor by contributions of money