Detective and mystery stories; New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Science fiction; Trant, Luther (Fictitious character) -- Fiction
The bearded face of the German grew purple under Welter’s jokingly
overbearing manner; but he turned to the instruments and began to
explain them. The pneumograph, which the professor first took up,
consists of a very thin flexible brass plate suspended by a cord
around the neck of the person under examination, and fastened tightly
against the chest by a cord circling the body. On the outer surface of
this plate are two small, bent levers, connected at one end to the
cord around the body of the subject, and at the other end to the
surface of a small hollow drum fastened to the plate between the two.
As the chest rises and falls in breathing, the levers press more and
less upon the surface of the drum; and this varying pressure on the
air inside the drum is transmitted from the drum through an airtight
tube to a little pencil which it lowers and raises. The pencil, as it
rises and falls, touching always a sheet of smoked paper traveling
over a cylinder on the recording device, traces a line whose rising
strokes represent accurately the drawing of air into the chest and
whose falling represents its expulsion.
It was clear to Trant that the professor’s rapid explanation, though
plain enough to the psychologists already familiar with the device,
was only partly understood by the big men. It had not been explained
to them that changes in the breathing so slight as to be imperceptible
to the eye would be recorded unmistakably by the moving pencil.
Professor Schmalz turned to the second instrument. This was a
plethysmograph, designed to measure the increase or decrease of the
size of one finger of a person under examination as the blood supply
to that finger becomes greater or less. It consists primarily of a
small cylinder so constructed that it can be fitted over the finger
and made airtight. Increase or decrease of the size of the finger then
increases or decreases the air pressure inside the cylinder. These
changes in the air pressure are transmitted through an airtight tube
to a delicate piston which moves a pencil and makes a line upon the
record sheet just under that made by the pneumograph. The upward or
downward trend of this line shows the increase or decrease of the
blood supply, while the smaller vibrations up and down record the
pulse beat in the finger.
There is still a third pencil touching the record sheet above the
other two and wired electrically to a key like that of a telegraph
instrument fastened to the table. When this key is in its normal
position this pencil makes simply a straight line upon the sheet; but
instantly when the key is pressed down, the line breaks downward also.
This third instrument is used merely to record on the sheet, by the
change in the line, the point at which the object that arouses
sensation or emotion is displayed to the person undergoing
examination.
The instant’s silence which followed Schmalz’s rapid explanation was
broken by one of Welter’s companions with the query:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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