HOWTO Stop the Little Rascals from riding on your bumper
The March, 1936 ish of Science and Mechanics featured this dubious DIY project to keep street urchins from riding on your horseless carriage's bumpers: electrocute 'em! Didn't I see this in a Little Rascals short?
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IF your auto is pestered by hitchers-on, here is a good cure. Fit a Ford coil with a piece of chain which will drag along the ground (but must not touch the car), and ground the other end of the coil to the car. Complete circuit as shown, and close switch for results—Rocco Conte.
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Would YT's pooning have been stopped by this diabolical device? Probably not (non-conducting elastopolymer tether).
Even if YT's poon had used steel cable, the wheels of her plank would be insulation enough.
This is obviously why they switched away from the old-fashioned steel soled shoes to rubber ones.
Of course, since this gizmo puts a voltage onto the car's chassis, you'd get exactly the same shock every time you stepped out of the car.
not if you jump!
Why not just backup real quick and run them down? Did they even have lawyers back then?
blasted kids
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDrzMGdYWZc
Reminds me of this strip from Penny Arcade!
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/12/24
It may sound nice to shock people who annoy you, but how would you REALLY feel if this happened?
Y.T. would just figure out a way to charge her skateboard from the current.
Wow! I'm not that old (47) and my dad had one of these old Ford coils stashed away. As a teenager a friend of mine and I did this!!!!
During the winters we use to get kids hanging on the bumper of the car and sliding behind the car on slick shoes. We called them hookie-bobbers. After hooking up the coil to my friends old 56 Chev metal bumper we waited at a corner for some little fool to hook up to the bumper, then WHAM! We set off the coil. Lots of fun watch their reaction.
Of course today, as an adult, I realize it was a stupid think to do, but at the time we had great fun until all the kids knew not to hook up to my friends car.
@#9 Knodi:
"It may sound nice to shock people who annoy you, but how would you REALLY feel if this happened?"
Triumphant.
Just what I need to stop those pesky kids riding on my bumpers - hey why not flame throwers - oh yeah, I forgot, they already do that in S. Africa!... So humane!!!! http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/africa/9812/11/flame.thrower.car/
You wouldn't get shocked when you got out of your car because you would use the switch to turn it off before you got out.
Especially at the gas station.
I had an electronics instructor do this with his car alarm back in 1981. It was great until he sent a student out to get something from his car and he forgot it was on. LOL
When I was 16 or 17 I had an old pick up truck. We used to make some nice big snowballs -- like 1' diameter, then 2 or 3 guys would crouch down in the bed of the truck with their snowballs, and the driver would go slowly through residential areas, encouraging bumper riders. Once we had some on (quite often 2 or 3)the driver would speed up, and the guys in the truck would sit up and fire these huge snowballs right in the smiling faces looking up at us. The looks of absolute fear just before you nailed them was priceless.
By odd coincidence, I spent part of the weekend discussing Ford Model T ignition coils. Why? Because Kevin Dunn, author of Caveman Chemistry, was Science Guest of Honor at Confusion, a venerable science fiction con in Troy, Michigan.
On Friday night, Kevin gave a stirring speech in which he explained that Model T ignition coils are the gateway to all electrical knowledge, and recounted his successes in learning about them (very old science books in the local library); obtaining them (the books' advice "go down to your local garage and buy one for $1.25" did not work in the Seventies, but he stumbled upon four at an antique store for nearly the same price); and experimenting with them (siblings make excellent test subjects in studies of high voltage).
Kevin tells it much better than I do.