🚀 go-pugleaf

Yes, yes.  I remember now!  Yes, the recollection brings a *chill* to my poor,
old body.  Well, let's see, how did this go... oh yes, now I remember:

Seems as though back around 1971 or so, the folks at LTV or some such local
"hi-tech" concern presented the fair city of Arlington, Texas with a similar
device.  Called it ORBIS - if memory serves.

Young speed-addicted hooligans, route salesmen, and housewives were prone to
drive much too fast down a then-desolate stretch of road running east and
west in the south part of town (spur 303).  One day a box, perched on top of
a stout and well anchored pipe, appeared in the median.  Before long there
were four of 'em - spaced a couple of miles apart.

Well, anyway, the box was square and had two windows on each of a pair of
opposing sides - so it could look at both the commin' and goin' side of the
road.  Inside this box was rumored to be a radar speed detector, a camera,
and a large flash, all powered by internal batteries.  There was only one
ORBIS, but it could be in any of the four boxes, looking in either
direction.  You had a 1 out of 8 chance of encountering the real article at
a particular installation.

THE STORY GOES...

The Arlington city council was very pleased with their new law enforcement
doo-dad and touted it widely and loudly.  Some say that the city had a deal
wherein they would share in the profits from any sales of the system.
Anyway, by the by, officials from one place or another would visit Arlington
for a demo.

One time a squad of Japanese were there for a demo.  The SOP was to have the
visiting dignitaries in position behind the box (peering inside it at the
speed and violation displays) while a car (driven by a duly trained and
certified police officer) was driven by to trip the mechanism.

THIS time, the car was a rather robust '68 Vette recently confiscated during
a drug bust (1971, remember?) and blew by with an indicated speed of 156 mph.
The Japanese were EXTREMELY impressed and babbled among themselves in
Japanese for quite some time.  When the 'Vette returned, the visitors grew
even MORE excited.

Yes, it seemed that the Japanese WERE VERY interested.  But only in the car!
Each one insisted on (and got) a ride in the car past ORBIS at a speed in
excess of 150 mph, AND the photograph of himself zooming by in a ballistic
chunk of Detroit iron to take home as a souvenir.

The story FURTHER goes...

that the 1971 radar system was so power hungry (on 24 hrs/day) and
unreliable (false-triggered now and then (especially when buzzed) by
military aircraft radars on approach to the nearby Naval Airstation) that
another, mostly passive system had to be devised.  The "hi-tech" company
had, by now, lost interest in the whole thing, having few if any sales, so
it was up to the city to figure out a field retro-fit.

What they came up with was a pair of hoses stretched across the roadway
(like the ones stretched across the driveways in old-time service stations),
one pair per lane, and connected via pipes to the mechanism in the box.  An
electro-mechanical-electronic timing device would then determine time
between actuations and therefore speed.


One bright day when the film was developed, one frame showed evidence of
very excessive speed!  Since there was no longer any radar in the box, it
couldn't possibly be a false trigger.

The photograph showed a driverless car with no front liscense plate being
pushed across the trip hoses at 255 mph by 6 young males wearing ski masks,
sneakers, and nothing else.  In addition, a rather statuesque young woman,
long hair blowing in the apparent slipstream and obscuring her face, was
perched on the front of the car - hood ornament style, buck nekkid as we say
here in this part o' Texas, making an obscene jesture at the ORBIS camera.

The Arlington police were NOT amused.  Not only was someone(s) making fun of
them and their "high-tech" doo-dad, but they could not identify the vile
perputrator(s) so as to bring them to justice.  And worse yet, none of them
had a clue as to how it was done!

Soon they were desperate - honor was a stake.  Copies of the photograph were
discretely circulated in hopes that someone could be identified - sent to
various city and state agencies who delt with juveniles, highschool coaches
(who obviously should be able to identify those in the photograph!)  and so
on.

Well...  copies of the photograph got out (as these things tend to do) and
the press (which did not like the idea of robocop in the first place) got
wind of it all and had the proverbial field day at the cops' expense.
Pretty soon everyone was laughing at the cops and clammoring to have ORBIS
reenter into a junkyard somewhere.

The cops immediately shut off the rightous indignation, the moral outrage,
the investigation, and ORBIS.  Some even had a good laugh at themselves
(privately, of course) and slinked off to maintain a low profile for a
while.  And after a while, everyone more or less forgot about ORBIS. 


How was the evil deed accomplished?  Well, lets just say that it was a very,
VERY cold night in October when a norther was blowing a strong wind out of
the northwest, when a certain band of merry men (and woman) chanced to check
the designers' plan for coping with illegal states - like fer instance the
timer stop signal arriving before the start signal - by pulling a car
backwards across the trip hoses...


How do I know?  Er, well...  uh...  I read in the paper.  Yeah, thats it.
It was in the Arlington...  uh...  uh...  the Arlington ...  uh...  No, it
was on the...  on the NEWS.  Yeah, I saw it in the news.  Chet Huntly was
sayin' that it was the stupi...  no...  that it was the most...  no ...  was
the BRAVEST thing he'd ever seen.  Yeah.  And cleverist, too.  Yeah, thats
the ticket.


Well, that's the story.


leigh ellert