KinSource - Tale of the Week - An Ingenious Device

KinSource

Minnesota Tales

The St. Paul Daily Globe, June 7, 1887, p. 5

AN INGENIOUS DEVICE.

By Which Night Watchmen are Compelled to Be Vigilant.

Ingenious devices to "hold tab" on employes are appearing constantly. The bell punch and fare register of street car lines are gentle hints to the conductors and street car drivers that they must be honest. If some happy genius could devise a scheme by which telegraph and messenger boys could be kept awake on their routes a suffering world would rise up and call him blessed. But no more can the sleepy watchman sit in the shadowy doorway and doze away the time he is supposed to spend on guard. A device -- and a most ingenious one -- has just been introduced by Quinlan & King, the detectives, to hold their night watch strictly down to business. It is a large brass watch, keeping perfect time and carrying, safely locked within it, a movable dial, on which every move of the watchman is registered. It, with twelve station keys, comprises the whole outfit. The twelve station keys are attached by chains at twelve different points in the block to be watched, according to any plan that may be desired. The watch is given to the watchman, who then makes his rounds, stops at each station, takes the key which he finds chained there, inserts it in the top of the watch and turns it once around, whereby the dial is marked by the sign of that particular station, each key making a different mark on the dial. When the watchman has been relieved from duty and has delivered up his watch, it is opened, the dial removed and pasted in the record book, another dial put in, the watch wound up and locked ready for use again. The dial is graduated in hours and minutes and shows what stations the watchman visited, in what order, which, if any, he did not visit, the exact time he arrived at each station, how long it took him to go from one station to another, etc. It will not do for him to remain at one station and use the same key all the time, for if he does the same mark will be registered on the watch dial. The key he uses at station 6 marks the exact time he was there, and if he uses key 6 when he should be at station 10 it will show as plain as day on the watch. Already Messrs. Quinlan & King have secured a large territory, and the large number of burglaries recently is greatly helping their cause.