ELECTRIC EYE

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXX, Issue 4812, 22 February 1936, Page 2

ELECTRIC EYE

SEES THE PAST. USED AGAINST CRIME. NEW ROBOT DETECTIVE. New York January 30. An electric eye which can see events of the past was announced by agents of the Department of Justice here today as new equipment in their fight on crime. It is operated by use of the spectrograph. The Federal agents explained this robot: detective at the Science Exhibition of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The Federal men are here to seek the co-operation of the nation’s foremost scientists in the development of crime detection instruments which can be passed on to police depart-

ments throughout the country. The new eye is a development of the last six months. It uses the instrument with which astronomers recognise the different kinds of atoms on stars. The spectrograph does this by breaking light into the rainbow and photographing the lines which compose all these colours. Atomic Fingerprints. The Federal eye reveals the “fingerprints” of all known chemical elements. Each element has its own atomic “fingerprints ’ in lines seen in * the spectrograph, lines as plain as the whorls on a human finger. Any piece of evidence, one even no larger than the head of a pin, when analysed by the eye, shows every kind of atom of which it is made, even those buried from sight in its interior. It reveals them in mere traces so tiny that neither microscope nor chemistry can find them.

These fingerprints of atoms often show where the evidence came from originally, that is, where its parts grew, or were mined or manufactured. The “fingerprints” may reveal where the evidence has been, where it touched, and might show almost positive evidence of who touched it. The eye has been used with at least one spectacular result. Bits of earth clung to some evidence which had been temporarily buried. The eye showed traces of iron in this dirt, with clear atomic fingerprints. Mud ini Automobile. In the automobile of a suspect was found a bit of mud which might have dropped off his shoe. Under the eye this mud showed the same atomic iron fingerprints as the dirt on the buried evidence. It was different from all the other dirt in the car and from the soil of the region where the car usually travelled.

. ' 1. w/' ' ‘ C* With this information, the Federal men wore able to reconstruct a past trip of the car and it's driver into a definite piece of evidence. The eye does not lie. It has already also protected the innocent. The police had a repainted license plate, the paint with which the painting had apparently been done and the owner of the paint as a suspect. The eye showed that the paint on the plates was not the same as that seized. Although the colours were identical, one paint had been made with zinc and the other with lead.