Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 February 1884 — A Queer Invention. [ARTICLE]

A Queer Invention.

A detective machine has been invented in France, but it is hardly likely to take the place of the human kind in general use. It is simply a camera, so arranged that when a suspicious person enters a bank or other room, a clerk touches a little button. Presently, a concealed camera is brought into play, the sensitive plate is exposed, and in an instant the man’s photograph is taken. Or, again, the head of the house leaves his busiuess and confides it to his clerk. Some of the clerks go to sleep, or smoke cigars, or skylark, or do other things not exactly in keeping with their calhng, when there comes in a series of plates, worked by clock-work, and every action of the clerks during a series of hours is recorded. There might be even a pleasing, though compromising use of this mechanical camera. With such an instrument all the handsomest women at n soiree might be photograped without their knowledge, and galleries of beauties be put up at any one’s command.