Fed Up With Abusive Teenagers Hanging Around Your Shop?
Compound Security Systems Ltd, Through Extensive R & D Has Produced The MOSQUITO Unit That Uses Complex High Frequency Sound To Chase Away Those Annoying Teenagers!!!
Pat. Pending
As featured in The Grocer magazine and The Sunday Mirror. Presented on GM TV, Radio Five Live and 100 Century FM on November 7th
The Mosquito is the invention of one Howard Stapelton, Managing Director of Compound Security Devices of Merthyr Tydfil in Wales, and is simply a device that emits a piercing high frequency sound which has been described as a "cross between fingernails down a blackboard and a dental laser" which is apparently only audible to the under-twenties. It is thus put forward as a possible solution to the eternal bane of the British shopkeeper; that small crowd of anti-social teenagers who have nothing better to do than loiter outside their shop and deter older customers who actually have money to spend.
With an effective range of between fifteen and twenty metres Compound Security Devices claim that "field trials have shown that teenagers are acutely aware of the Mosquito and usually move away from the area within just a couple of minutes" and "that is completely harmless even with long term use". The Times reports that the device was first used at a Spar shop in Barry where the owner Robert Gough was enthusiastic about the device's success in driving away the local youth that he found so disquieting. "Either someone has come along and wiped them off the face of the earth, or it's working" he is quoted as saying.
Whereas this might appear to be a hoax or some kind of scam, it seems that there is a very real medical phenomenon known as presbycusis or age related hearing loss which, according to The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy, "begins after age 20 but is usually significant only in persons over 65" and "first affects the highest frequencies (18 to 20 kHz)". Thus it seems quite true that it is possible to generate a high frequency sound that is audible only to teenagers.
The answer to the prayers of grumpy old men and women the world over, the Mosquito unit can be yours for only £495 plus VAT, with an optional security cage available at £35 plus VAT, all inclusive of postage and packing.
SOURCES
- Tosin Sulaiman, Can a shriek-in-a-box see off troubling teenagers?
The Times 12 Novemeber 2005 also online at
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1868371,00.html
- Compound Security Devices at http://www.compoundsecurity.co.uk/index.html
- Presbycusis, The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy
http://www.merck.com/mrkshared/mmanual/section7/chapter85/85i.jsp