REMARKABLE DEVICE

Waipa Post, Volume 51, Issue 3694, 6 December 1935, Page 5

REMARKABLE DEVICE

"MECHANICAL BLOODHOUND.”

A “mechanical bloodhound” which can follow the scent of a human being is claimed to have been produced at the police laboratory at Vancouver, after eight years of experiment, says the Daily Mail. This apparatus, perhaps the most remarkable scientific device for detecting crime ever evolved, is the invention of a man who can truly be called a modern Sherlock Holmes— Inspector* John Vance, of the Vancouver police.

Inspector Vance, a tall, studiouslooking man of 65, modest in manner, but full of quiet enthusiasm for his invention, has been in charge of the Vancouver Police Bureau of Science for many years.

He explained how his device enables him to “see” the scent left by a human being.

“When you look at it through a spectroscope it is recorded as a definite arrangement of bands of colour and dark lines on a narrow strip.

“I have tried my apparatus with 45 men, and have found that each has an individual scent which forms a different pattern in the spectroscope.

“I have wheeled the apparatus over the concrete floor of the laboratory and the landing outside, and have followed the footsteps of a man though I did not know the route he had taken.

“I see no reason to suppose that every human being has not a definite scent which would form lines in the spectroscope as peculiar to himself or herself as the finger-print. “I can imagine a detective tracing movements of a murderer with this apparatus, in which was fixed a copy of the spectroscope markings made by the man’s scent on the scene of the crime.

“There are difficulties, however, at the moment in dealing with footprints on wood or grass, as these surfaces have a scent of their own which makes it hard to pick out human scent.”

The “mechanical bloodhound” has not yet been used on a real crime, but Inspector Vance hopes that he will soon have the opportunity of giving a demonstration of its, value. It is only one of many marvels of his elaborately-equipped laboratory, which is famous throughout Canada and the United States. His scientific methods of examining dust and marks on clothing or other articles of/suspects often produce such definite evidence that the men confess to the crime.