BIRMINGHAM has been called "The Whistling Capital of the World" and Simon Topman, managing director of the Acme Whistle Company, recently came to tell us why.

His company was founded by Joseph Hudson, a farm worker from Matlock, who came to the Midlands in 1870 determined to manufacture new products. After trying all sorts of things he finally, in 1883, hit on the idea of producing a whistle which would make a particularly piercing and urgent shriek and which he reckoned would appeal to the police.

Such was the success of his demonstration that he received an immediate order from the London Metropolitan Police for 21,000 whistles; the old wooden police rattle was out, his business took off, and orders poured in from all over the Commonwealth. His factory, built in 1909 to a high specification including stained glass, parquet flooring and mahogany beams, still stands and houses the records of all orders he booked in every year since then.

To build on his success he turned his attention to sport; referees until that time were controlling games of football by waving white handkerchiefs, and Joseph's invention of the "Acme Thunderer" whistle, complete with pea to give it that characteristic warble, quickly became the standard whistle everywhere, used to this day.

Mr Topman demonstrated these whistles (which can also be heard on the Acme Whistle website), and then proceeded to show us various pipes, tubes and cones which imitated the sounds of American locomotives, pigeons, ducks, pigs, nightingales and roaring lions, and even the supposed sound of the Loch Ness Monster!

He also amused us all hugely through his ability to mimic dialects and foreign accents, telling us of things that happened to him while demonstrating his products in parts of the UK and in North America, Germany and France. A hilarious evening which had us whistling for more.

The society's next meeting will be on February 24 when Bernard Mills will give a slide show entitled "Shopping Over Two Hundred Years".