Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 55, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 March 1915 — DIGTAGRAPHONE AID TO POLICE [ARTICLE]

DIGTAGRAPHONE AID TO POLICE

German’s Invention Improves Device so that Listener may Hear at Long Distances. IT CAN BE INSTALLED IN CELLS Instrument Also Works Nicely When Placed in Dives Where Crooks and Thieves Are Berlin.—-Pro- He.ns Grosse, the distinguished G rm. i criminologist of the University of Granz, Austria, discusses the u> s to which the dictagraphone have oeen put in Europe for criminal detection purposes. He describes the dictagraphone experiments he himself has been carrying on in his laboratory. They are fully set forth in the recently published fifty-fifth volume of the Grosse monumental criminologist archives. He used an apparatus which worked so successfully that a listener in an entirely different part of the building could overhear without the slightest difficulty every word spoken in the vicinity of the hidden apparatus, even if the listener were not standing close to the receiver. Prof. Grosse states that the advantages of the dictagraphone for police detective authorities is unlimited. It can be installed in cells, where accomplices are incarcerated, and in dives where thieves, pickpockets and other criminals foregather for the preparation of jobs.” Its value is also apparent if managers or superintendents of offices or works desire to spy on suspected employes. Prof. Grosse even calls attention to the possibility of dictagraphones doing good spying service in war times. He admits that the reverse side of the medal is the unlawful use to which the dictagraphone can easly be put. The Supreme Court here lately decided that eavesdropping over the telephone was a penal offense. The Supreme Court also decreed that the shadowing of a private person by a detective for what was proved to be a groundless reason was punishable as a misdemeanor. The secret installation of a dictaphone, dictagraph or dictagraphone in Germany by purely private persons would entail the gravest legal consequences. ‘‘So we may rest easy,” says a writer in The Berliner