Stab Register

Contrary to popular legend, Frenchmen are not emotional, like Germans, but the most rational race in the world. In a Parisian salle d'armes last week one Dr. Armand Massard, inventive swordsman, President of the Parisian Federation of Fencing, exhibited a device to rationalize duelling. Frenchmen applauded.

Like navigation, electrodynamics, foil fencing is an exact science. Its only drawback is the necessity for sharp-eyed judges crouching on the sidelines to shout "touche" every time a fencer's sword point touches the plastron of his adversary.

Whether a fence has actually been touched or not is always the source of innumerable acrimonious disputes, disputes which Swordsman President Massard aimed to do away with.

His device, dubbed by frivolous reporters "Massard's Stab Register," consists of a pair of electrified foils and a pair of electrified plastrons (chest protectors), the whole connected by delicate thread-like wires. In place of the rubber tip on an ordinary foil, is a small metallic ball and spring. Wires run up the fencer's sleeves and out through an opening in the back of his coat, trail out behind him on the mat. When the positive tip of one foil strikes the negatively charged plastron of an adversary, a gong rings, and a touch is marked up on the Stab Register. Stabbing the floor, another foil blade or hilt, does not register. Inventor Massard insisted last week that it is impossible for fencers equipped with "Massard's Stab Register" to short circuit or electrocute themselves.

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