The Truth Machine: A Social History of the Lie Detector

257 Pages·2012·3.53 MB·English

by  Geoffrey C. Bunn

The Truth Machine
JOHNS HOPKINS STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY
Merritt Roe Smith, Series Editor
The Truth Machine
A Social History of the Lie Detector
Geoffrey C. Bunn
The Johns Hopkins University Press
Baltimore
© 2012 The Johns Hopkins University Press
All rights reserved. Published 2012
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bunn, G. C. (Geoffrey C.)
The truth machine : a social history of the lie detector / Geoffrey C. Bunn.
p. cm. — (Johns Hopkins studies in the history of technology)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4214-0530-8 (hdbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-1-4214-0651-0 (electronic)
ISBN-10: 1-4214-0530-x (hdbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 1-4214-0651-9 (electronic)
1. Lie detectors and detection—History. 2. Lie detectors and detection—
United States—History. I. Title.
HV8078.B86 2012
363.25´4—dc23 2011044971
A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
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whenever possible.
What therefore is truth? A mobile army of metaphors,
metonymies, anthropomorphisms: in short a sum of human
relations which become poetically and rhetorically intensified,
metamorphosed, adorned, and after long usage seem to a nation
fixed, canonic and binding; truths are illusions of which one has
forgotten they are illusions, worn-out metaphors which have
become powerless to affect the senses; coins which have their
obverse effaced and now are no longer of account as coins but
merely as metal.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, “On Truth and Lie in an
Extra-Moral Sense” (1873)
It is so easy to do wrong! Everything the Devil makes runs
easily. It is only God’s machinery which has friction. The lie
is spontaneous;—the truth requires thought. Yet the offhand
production is born with the seeds of decay in it, and its other
name is “Death.” Its history is always cyclical, and returns upon
itself; for the path of a lie is so tortuous that, sooner or later,
it is bound to intersect its own course. Then comes discovery,
humiliation, pain—retribution. The hyperbola of deception has
never yet been plotted.
—Milton L. Severy, TheMystery of June 13th (1905)
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contents
Introduction
Plotting the Hyperbola of Deception 1
Chapter 1
“A thieves’ quarter, a devil’s den”:
The Birth of Criminal Man 7
Chapter 2
“A vast plain under a flaming sky”:
The Emergence of Criminology 30
Chapter 3
“Supposing that Truth is a woman—what then?”:
The Enigma of Female Criminality 51
Chapter 4
“Fearful errors lurk in our nuptial couches”:
The Critique of Criminal Anthropology 75
Chapter 5
“To Classify and Analyze Emotional Persons”:
The Mistake of the Machines 94
Chapter 6
“Some of the darndest lies you ever heard”:
Who Invented the Lie Detector? 116
Chapter 7
“A trick of burlesque employed...against dishonesty”:
The Quest for Euphoric Security 134
viii Contents
Chapter 8
“A bally hoo side show at the fair”:
The Spectacular Power of Expertise 154
Conclusion
The Hazards of the Will to Truth 174
Acknowledgments 193
Notes 195
Essay on Sources 237
Index 241
The Truth Machine