Switch on the small gray metal box and listen: A sharp, pulsating, high-pitched tone burrows into the ear like a power drill bit, prompting an agitated, please-shut-that-blasted-thing-off grimace. That’s what you hear if you’re between the ages of 13 and 25.
If you’re not, you may not sense a thing.
Howard Stapleton himself can’t hear the sound he conjured up three years ago. His daughter, Isobel, 15 at the time, had come home in tears from a store in their town in south Wales, after having been harassed by other teens.
The store owner told Stapleton that he and other merchants and customers wanted the young toughs gone, too, but feared a confrontation with them.
As the 41-year-old security device inventor contemplated the problem, he recalled from his teenhood the awful buzz of an ultrasound welding machine at his father’s glue-plastics factory. He remembered that his complaints about the noise would be met with a quizzical look from workers: “What noise?”
From that impulse to help rid his local market of loiterers came his invention, “the Mosquito,” an electronic contraption that emits a high-pitched pulsating sound that can mostly be heard only by teens and people in their early to mid-20s. It works because an age-related hearing loss called presbycusis reduces the ability to hear high-pitched sounds after the late 20s. The device is mostly inaudible to older adults, young children and pets.
In the United Kingdom, the Mosquito has become the next big thing in crowd and crime control — and it may one day be coming to a teen hangout near you. It entered the U.S. market last fall.
The Mosquito emits a sound that can be heard up to 60 feet away for 20 minutes at a time. It can be heard by those wearing earphones and over loud music.
The Mosquito regularly ranges from $1,495 to $1,895.
One prospective customer, the Calvert County sheriff’s department in Southern Maryland, thought the apparatus could help clear certain areas of skateboarders, who gather late into the night and disperse when officers arrive, only to return when they leave.
“I don’t want to give away the exact locations, but I can say that it will be put up mainly in the northern end of the county,” said Sheriff Matt McDonough, who said community leaders plan to purchase the Mosquito this spring. “We’re hoping to put a timer on the devices and run them from 10 p.m. to 6 in the morning. Hopefully, that will reduce the disorderly and public disturbance calls.”
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
