Fly-Power, Knowles

The energy that a fly uses in crawling up one inch of window-pane in one second, is as near to nothing at all as most people can imagine. But last week, Dr. D. D. Knowles, 28-year old research engineer of the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Co., demonstrated before unbelieving eyes in the Hotel Pennsylvania in Manhattan, a device that runs on one-fortieth of one fly-power--in electrical parlance: one-billionth of a watt.

By Dr. Knowles' device, a dewdrop could be made to stop a battleship, a passing cloud to turn on all the electric lights in New York, a sunbeam to start the most ponderous locomotive.

All of these things Dr. Knowles would accomplish by means of a relay. A relay is an electromagnetic device in which the opening or closing of a circuit causes the opening or closing of a more powerful circuit. The ordinary relay will control a current only 10,000 times greater than the current that controls it. Dr. Knowles's new relay--a tube type, containing neon or argon gas--would control a current about 100,000,000 times as great as its controlling current. Photoelectrically adjusted, it could be operated by passing shadows.

Uses predicted; Letting dusk and dawn turn a city's lights on and off automatically; letting burglars announce their presence with their own flashlights, fires with their own glare; counting persons or automobiles passing by their shadows; stopping a train by its own searchlight or vibrations.

The Inventor. Electrical genius made D. D. Knowles an enfant terrible in his early youth. From wiring doorknobs and pianos to shock imprudent visitors in his Ohio home, he turned to electric traps for the destruction of hen-ravishing hawks. Less than four years ago he was graduated by Purdue University.