wow look at this from 1937

How did it work??? It does seem years ahead of it's time. BUT....I remember toys of the 50's and 60's not always working as advertized. If I was a kid I'd asked for the Mercury 10 car trains set for $6!!!!! Some extra track and you'd be a happy kid!

It was a tower that you would press the switch in the bottom and say foreward and the train would move forward, reverse etc. I bought one at a hardware store around the corner in the mid 60's for like a dollar new. The cardboard sleeve was old looking so it may have been a pre war NOS but the tower was new. I used it with Flyer S and it never really worked that great. It was made for a low voltage transformer. 

There was an article in Classic Toy Trains a while ago stating it couldn't handle a New Joisey accent!

Rusty

You would need to speak Chinese for today's trains.

Another misleading product advertised in the '50s was converting your B&W TV to color for only a few bucks. You got a square of clear plasic that stuck to the screen that was tinted blue at the top, tan in the middle, and green at the bottom. OK for viewing desert landscapes, I guess.

I remember that film you put on your TV to 'convert" it to color. I was so disappointed - and remember so looking forward to seeing Ruff and Readi in color!!!  Looking back, my cynicism as it stands today started right about then . . .

Boy, I had one of those towers, and didn't know what it was.

From what I remember, it probably works the same way as the Audio Engineer.

The Audio Engineer has a normally closed sail switch, with the sail (paddle) right behind the "microphone". The unpressed button holds the sail switch closed.

When you spoke into the "microphone" with the button pressed, the sail switch operated, opening the circuit.

As I recall, the instructions for the Audio Engineer instructed the User to exaggerate a sound in each command, such as "stoP", or "Go".

So there weren't really any electronics involved in the Audio Engineer.

I remember that article. The boy would say "reverse" and it would work. The uncle would say "revoise" and it wouldn't work.

Bill