Mechanical Man Throws Electric Switches at Sound of Its Inventor's Voice--Televox Developed for Remote Control

"Click, click, click, buzz," answered a Televox upon the signal of its inventor, R. J. Wensley, over an ordinary telephone last evening, and proceeded to turn on electric lights, start electric fans and trains and do other almost human things in the presence of a CRIMSON reporter. The Televox, which, was exhibited at the training school of the Boston Elevated Company, is the nearest approach to the long-sought "mechanical man". It consists of an imaginative cardboard figure of a man surrounding a complex electric outfit which forms the man's "heart".

"Its intelligence is only apparent," explained Mr. Wenslely; "it of course has no brain, and it can only do certain things under certain conditions worked out previously by a human mind. The machine was built at the Westinghouse Laboratories to answer a definite need, but, unfortunately the publicity department heard about it, and what started out as a serious invention has turned into a vaudeville act. Televox now has three brothers who are being shown in different parts of the country.

"The use for which the machine was developed, and which is as yet its only practical application. Is in automatic switching equipment. For instance, the central office desires to turn on a light or perform some similar operation in a distant power station where Televox has been installed and no human beings are present. The dispatcher at headquarters telephones the substation. Televox answers, the signal is given. Televox caries out the command, and reports that it has been done.

"When we really went at it, it proved an extremely simple thing to devise, and the apparatus was soon of up in our Pittsburgh offices. There was nothing in it that hard not already been in use; it was merely a new combination of parts that we already had."