Do it Yourself
| Date | 01 November 1965 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X6503801112 |
| Published date | 01 November 1965 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
DO
IT
YOURSELF
From
a Special
Correspondent
" For a long time now, in our fight against crime, we have concen-
trated on fighting the criminal. I hope that we have now learnt that to
be successful in the battle we must also fight carelessness."
With these words Miss Alice Bacon, M.P., Minister of State
at the Home
Office,
opened the " Safeguard '65 " exhibition spon-
sored by the Security Gazette and held in September at the Free
Trade Hall, Manchester. Miss Bacon pointed out
that
the Govern-
ment was about to spend £150,000 on a national crime prevention
campaign, but added that to be successful any such campaign must
be backed by the availability of
"crime
prevention
hardware"
and that advisers on crime prevention, whether they were the police,
insurance companies, security firms or security officers, needed to be
aware of the latest developments in the field.
Vehicle Protection
In the event this exhibition proved a useful if minor complement
to the more general exhibition mounted by the Research Committee
of the Association of Chief Police Officers at Coventry later the
same month. Here the emphasis was on what the public could do
for its own protection, and it was perhaps symptomatic of the
times in which we live that, so far as your correspondent could
discover, no domestic protection was exhibited suitable for the use of
the man who would once have travelled on the Clapham omnibus,
while valuable, if at time perhaps embarrassing, protection was
offered by two firms for his present means of transport, the motor-
car. These devices were
the"
Watchdog"
from Fire Detection,
Ltd., and the "
Selmar"
from Stellar Components, Ltd., both of
which sell for under £10.
The Watchdog is the more ambitious (as well as the more expen-
sive), and being activated by an up-and-down movement of the car,
is probably less likely to embarrass the owner by creating a false
alarm than is the Selmar, which is activated by a lateral movement.
Both provided an extremely audible warning blast together with
ignition immobilization, the Watchdog also providing for the im-
mobilization of the electric fuel pump and winking lights when a
door is opened.
In the commercial transport field an ingenious system of protec-
tion was exhibited by Systems Control (Electronics), Ltd., of South-
ampton. The system is programmed by a selector switch providing
for more than 800,000 possible number combinations. In standard
November 1965 545
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