[ExI] Religion and the E-meter before Hubbard
Damien Broderick
thespike at satx.rr.com
Sun Jul 24 21:51:21 UTC 2011
TIME, Monday, Oct. 12, 1936
Best known mechanical device to detect lying is the polygraph, perfected
by Professor Leonarde Keeler of Northwestern University. A subject
attached to the polygraph who tells an untruth supposedly registers
changes in blood pressure, pulse and respiration which are indicated by
a needle jiggling on a graph. Tested last week in Manhattan was another
such instrument—the psychogalvanometer. The invention of tall, burly
Father Walter G. Summers, S.J., Ph.D., head of Fordham University's
department of psychology, the psychogalvanometer works not on the heart
and lungs but on the minute electrical currents coursing through the body.
In Father Summers' Woolworth Building laboratory a newshawk grasped an
electrode in each hand as if he were experimenting with a toy shock
machine. The electrodes were attached to an apparatus resembling a radio
set, inside which were two balanced electrical circuits, with a two
stage amplifier on the input side hooked up to a recording milliammeter.
Any electrical agitation the newshawk betrayed under emotional stress
would jiggle the milliammeter, make a needle correspondingly scratch a
chart.
Producing five cards, Father Summers asked the newshawk to choose one in
his mind, then deny, card by card, that he had selected any of them when
they were reshown him. Watching the needle, Father Summers flipped the
five cards, heard the newshawk's answers, then declared: "Your card was
the three of diamonds." The newshawk was compelled to admit it was.
The bigger the lie, says Father Summers, the bigger the jiggle. This
year Providence, R. I. police let him use the machine on a woman
suspected of theft. When she denied committing the crime herself, the
needle moved mildly. When she denied knowing who had committed it, the
needle jumped. In court it was established that the woman actually was
an accomplice.
The psychogalvanometer is more comfortable than the polygraph, whose
subject has a sphygmomanometer (blood pressure meter) strapped with
oppressive tightness on his arm. Neither machine will work on madmen.
================================
[Alas, the newshawk failed to note that overuse of the E-meter will
*create* madmen!]
More information about the extropy-chat
mailing list