They didn't have Eltron, but some humorous writers wrote very interesting stories related to the technology of the time. In this story from 1923, the author tells how a lady managed to boil Dutch Limburg cheese (famous for its bad smell) and then let it crystallize and obtained a detector crystal with incredible properties. By placing it in a receiver, she was able to receive messages from Mars. It was a time when it was believed that intelligent creatures existed on Mars. The idea is left for Eltron. In fact, he is already thinking about using his smelly sneakers to make a quantum signal detector.