For Royand Neva Gordon,10 August 1937 was a bad day. Six days earlier, they had been in a three-car pile-up in Marion county, Indiana. Now they were in court. Neva faced charges of beingdrunk, Roy of drunkdriving. The couple had picked the wrong time and the wrong state to have one too many. The state police were in the middle of a road-safety campaign. And on that particular summer day, they unleashed their latest weapon in the waron drink-driving: the drunkometer. The Gordons were arrested and charged on the say-so of a brightly coloured balloon and a box of bottles and tubes. For Rolla Harger, a quiet professor at Indiana University medical school, it was a good day. Afteryears of experiment, his device was about to face the ultimate test. If it passed, the roads would soon be safer.
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