Word: detector
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...July 26, Jap radio detector instruments on Kiska picked up "two masses of steel" approaching from east and west. In the thick northern fog a terrific cannonading broke out, then the masses of steel moved away. Later a Jap evacuation fleet entered the harbor unscathed. "Thus the soldiers from Kiska believe that the souls of the deified heroes of Attu had lured the enemy over the sea and made them fight each other by tampering with their wireless instruments...
...detector," said Mrs. Edna Hancock, "lied...
...began to investigate, soon unearthed evidence that Goldman's story might be true. Thereupon the judge called in a psychologist and tested Goldman with a psychogalvanometer which, by recording electrical impulses in a man's skin, is supposed to show whether he answers questions truthfully. The lie detector gave Goldman 100% and Judge Leibowitz gave him his freedom...
Last week, however, the case started a new circle. Accompanied by her sailor husband, with whom she had been vacationing in their home town of Drury, Mo., Mrs. Hancock stormed into the Brooklyn district attorney's office and demanded a new trial. The district attorney, observing that lie-detector tests have no legal standing in New York, promptly promised...
Courts in general consider lie detectors too unreliable to admit their findings as conclusive evidence. Psychologists are equally skeptical of them. There are now some half-dozen such instruments, depending variously on measurements of blood pressure, breathing, heartbeats, etc., to detect emotional disturbances that are believed to be associated with lying. But, although some inventors claim better than 85% accuracy, proof of a lie detector's infallibility is obviously impossible to obtain. There is no way of guaranteeing that, in some cases, even the best instrument may not tell the wrong story...