Our next-door neighbor had one of the original Clappers and I distinctly remember the dad cursing whenever he would be channel surfing and accidentally turn to a show filmed before a live audience (like the Arsenio Hall Show) because the applause from the audience would occasionally trigger the clapper and turn the lights off in the living room.
I've got no experience with the original "The Clapper", but I had a DIY solder kit for a clap-switch. From what I could figure out that thing would look for two transients with a fairly specific amount of non-transient in between. So clap-clap would trigger it, but not clap...clap or clapclap or clapclapclap. Applause would not trigger that thing. But to be fair neither would trying to activate it without some practice first.
Looks like it's a device for preventing the fastest possible descent by eating itself during a fall. First example I could find involved a little yelling.
So that is what the thing is called, I use these when climbing trees and working on high buildings on the farm. I made a longbow with a strong enough pull to shoot a heavy arrow (a piece of an old broom handle with PET-bottle wings on the back) attached to a nylon line used to pull the safety line over/through whatever I happen to need to fix. Thus far I have not had the misfortune to test the efficacy of the 'screamer' but I'll be sure to scream if I ever have to.
Many years ago when I worked on the Triggertrap camera trigger we'd set up a "scream booth" at events, using the sound trigger. It was a great way of getting attention, and generating content that people want to share.
https://www.diyphotography.net/how-build-scream-triggered-ph...
Braun had an alarm clock in the 90s that you could control with your voice. They called it "voice contol" and the commercial is hilariously similar to your video:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Clapper
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