LATEST INVENTION

Hokitika Guardian, 16 September 1933, Page 6

LATEST INVENTION

MACHINE THAT WILL TEST LOVE “PAD NEWS FOR WIVES” “Here is bad nows for wives!” writes Leslie Stowe in the Sunday Chronicle. I have just seen the machine which is going to rob the world of its secrets, to analyse love, and register automatically and scientifically whether a husband ii> in love with his wife or vice versa, and whether the criminal in the dock is telling the truth of not.” The machine is the first of its kind and is only at the of initial stage of its development. Its possibilties are described as' enormous—and Wither frightening. It is the private detective brouglifi right into daily domestic live—it makes all the little white lies so many feathers blown in the air. it records on a graph which cannot be den died the secret thoughts, and records them so accurately a,s to lie uncanny. The writer says:—“lf you are superstitious you will say it is an invention of-‘-the-Devil. If you are sane and normal and reasonable, you will say it is a very disturbing thing fo hie suddenly thrust upon the world. It is like living in ,a glass house. -This amazing machine is the invention of Dr Alexander Cannon, a well-known scientist. It has taken him years of patientexperiment- to perfect. Yesterday 1 was. tested, analysed, and put on the rack by tliis new scientific terror.

“Can you imagine yourself seated in a chair, with a contrivance a little like, a lifebelt strapped across your chest, being asked questions which you know you must answer truthfully unless you want your lie recorded in indelible ink on a sheet cf paper? On listening to music so that every emotion rises and falls until the expert knows oxactely what you have been thinking about, and what you. have been feeling?

“It is not exactly pleasant, and it is not until tlien that you realise bow much there is about, you you do not want- people to know and bow very private your life is. ‘A man is as lie thinks,’ some lias, said, but what he thinks lias hern hjs- own private affair. Now , comes the moving thinker psychograph, whiting silently on. the glazed surface of snow-white paper all that he thinks and therefore all that he

“1 was asked. ‘Do you like this room ?’ I didn’t much, but out. of a sort of politeness, which one could no'' .(consider at lying, I;-said ‘Yes, it’s a pleasant room.’ There, in red ink on the psychograph, was recorded the fact that I did not like the room at all. ’After than and several other tilings 1 began to feel quite nervous. “It. is. a. very refined and civilised third degree—a silent- mechine in a silent room with a gruff ■ voiced-asking questions and its inscrutable pen recording the truth.: - ■■ • - • “Do you like your work ?” ?. I was asked.

“I said ‘Yes,’ quite emphatically, because it is true. Nevertheless, tire machine detected a slight hesitation land actually the thought had just 'flashed across my mind that work was not- so good when the temperature was 85 in the shade.

“While I was connected to the apparatlis a gramophone record was played hy my side, and I was assured my sub-conscious mind was dancing all the time the record was on. That, also, I knew to be true, and 1 began to look at the machine as a native in the heart of Africa might look at an aeroplane coming cut of the clouds for the first time.

“I own imagine nothing mo”e calculated to strike terror into the heart of the criminal. The cleverest network of lies would he ripped through after quarter of an hour by, this Sphinx-like machine, but it, will ho welcomed bv the innocent as infallible proof of innocence. There is no end to its possibilities on both the tragic and comic side of life.”