Manufacturers of safes will be impelled to fight the scientific
burglar with his own weapons. In somewhat the same fashion
by which time-locks prevent the opening of the lock of a
safe during certain hours, it will be comparatively easy to
introduce into safe-construction chemico-mechanical devices
which, during a limited time, would render it either fatal or
physically impossible to remain in the vicinity of a safe or
vault, were the walls or doors tampered with to such an extent
as to allow access to the interior. By use of a very simple form
of apparatus containing potassium cyanid and sulfuric acid, a
robber would expose himself to the deadly fumes of prussic acid.
Less dangerous, through possibilities of accident to
those regularly using a safe, would be the employment of
substances crippling a safe-blower or forcing him to an
instantaneous retreat. The volatilization of a few drops of
ethyl-dichlor-acetate would cause such profuse and persistent
weeping that one in the neighborhood would be temporarily
blinded if he persisted in remaining. The breaking of a tube
of liquid ammonia would render immediate withdrawal imperative
under peril of suffocation.--THOMAS H. NORTON,
_Machinery_.
(2837)