Did
you ever see someone in an old movie blow into a balloon to see how
drunk they were? That was part of a device called the Harger
Drunkometer. After Prohibition was repealed inthe 1930s, police had to
deal with an upswing of drunk driving. It was hard to get a conviction
without concrete evidence, though, so law enforcement turned to science
for help.
Cue Indiana University biochemist and
toxicologist Rolla N. Harger, who had been working since 1931 on a
machine to put hard evidence behind a police officer’s claim. Harger
finally got a patent for the Drunkometer in 1936. The upshot? A person
would blow into a balloon, and the air would drop into a chemical
solution, with the corresponding color change indicating blood alcohol
content. “Instead of banning alcohol, which didn’t work, we look to a
device that quantifies just how much drinking is OK,” says Bruce
Bustard, who curated “Spirited Republic,” the National Archives exhibit
on the history of the U.S. government’s relationship with alcohol.
The Drunkometer was used until the Breathalyzer came on the market in the 1950s. Read about
the first case in which a Drunkometer was used at Ozy.
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