1915 – Electric Dog – Christian Berger – (Hungarian / American)

I found a single reference to a French Electric Dog that "will jump out of its kennel when a whistle sounds". The rest of the brief article talks about Miessner's "Electric Dog".

Ingenious Mechanism – Le Grand Reporter, 30 Dec 1921 p2 

The electric dog which will follow a lantern in the dark—a mechanical curio constructed by John Hays Hammond, Jr.— has a rival in a French electric dog that will jump out of its kennel when a whistle sounds. The Hammond dog is controlled by selenium cells. The amount of electricity that will pass through selenium varies with the amount of light shining on the metal. With a selenium cell for each eye of the dog, and a small electric current operating a steering gear inside the toy. the dog will steer its course so as to have an equal amount of light on each eye, which means that it will keep its head toward any light. Storage batteries, and a motor, or clockwork, may be used for moving the dog.—Christian Science Monitor.

 

My next post in this category will be Piraux's 1928 Radio Dog "Philidog". This dog went through a few modifications before the one listed.

However, article suggests the 1921 dog is activated by a whistle, not a light, so it probably is different to Piraux's.

There is a patent that describes a similar contrivance, and may be the same item, so I will present that here.

Christian Berger's patent 1,405,708
Patent number: 1405708
Filing date: Nov 14, 1918
Issue date: Feb 7, 1922

Berger was originally from Budapest, Austria-Hungary. In 1909 he applied for a patent for "CONTROLLING FROM A DISTANT POINT THE OPERATION OF A MECHANISM OR INSTRUMENT. Patented in the US in Mar 11, 1913 Ser # 1,055,985.

Having an affiliation with Europe, it is quite possible that the "electric dog" mentioned is actually Berger's invention.

Pat US1279831. See here.

Berger's toy as described in The Electrical Experimenter, June 1917.