Breathalyzer History

1930's : Prohibition was in full effect and Rolla Neil Harger invented a machine, the Drunkometer, that could estimate the amount of alcohol that someone had drank based on a breath sample. The machine worked by having someone blow into a balloon, to control the amount of air tested. The air in the balloon was then released into a chemical solution. The alcohol in the breath sample would cause the chemical solution to change color - the amount of the color change indicated the amount of alcohol in the breath. Harger developed a simple equation that would estimate a persons blood alcohol content based on the result from his machine.

1930-1950's: At the same time that Harger was developing his drunkometer, Dr. Glenn C. Forrester was working on a similiar device that would later become the Breathalyzer. His Breathalyzer product working in much the same way as the Drunkometer, but it was the first to be used by states (michigan) for their new breath-testing programs.

1980's: The old chemical styled Breathalyzer devices gave way to devices that use infrared light to test for alcohol in breath samples. These devices use a narrow bank of infrared light that is passed through the breath sample. The alcohol within the breath would absorb some of the light, so the amount of light that reached the other side without being absorbed would indicate very precisely the amount of alcohol in the sample.

1980-present: Several new technologies have come out to make Breathalyzer devices that are even more accurate:

Fuel-cell or electrochemical cell devices work by using the alcohol in the breath sample as fuel for the fuel cell. The more alcohol contained in the breath, the more electricity that is generated. The amount of current that is generated from the sample provides a way to determine the concentration of alcohol in the sample.

Gwynne Giles, a pharmacologists at the University of Toronto, has developed a technology that doesn't rely on breath samples. His invention, the "Eyealyzer", measures that concentration of alcohol found in eye fluids