The Snogometer is not some new fancy device. Rather, this invention is the product of a 16 year old mind from the 60’s reports the BBC.
Designed to measure the power of a kiss, the archive Pathé news footage shows Malcolm putting his startling development through its paces whilst his mother (yes it is actually his real mother) looks on.
“I’d just turned 16 and was at Trowbridge College” says Malcolm who, now in his 60s, is still living in the county.
“And I was interested in electronics and I was also interested in kissing girls. So I put the two together.”
Working out of the attic of his parents’ home in Trowbridge, Malcolm created his ‘kissing machine’ from valves and relays he’d managed to salvage.
“It had a pair of handles made out of copper pipe,” says Malcolm, “that measured the resistance of the circuit between the couple.
“The resistance got lower the closer they got together and so the number on the Snogometer got higher and the more passionate they were the faster it went.”
Filmed in 1965, in his parents front room, the newsreel shows Malcolm fiddling with his machine whilst a couple of friends engage in a “passionate mashing session”.
“After that, I made several television appearances and even went up to the Granada studios in Manchester. They’d hired a model, just one model, but she was for the presenter to test the Snogometer with. Not for me. So I was a bit disappointed.”
Despite missing out on testing his machine on all the ladies, Malcolm’s Snogometer made him a national celebrity for a couple of months in the 60s.
“People would recognise me,” says Malcolm, “and I got lots of mail from all over the world including one from Australia just addressed to Malcolm Pickard, Snogometer, England. And it reached me.
Photo by Grafik Mekanik
