Inventions in Everything: The Skeletal Confessional for Criminal Suspects

A crime has been committed. The cops think they know who did it, but they don’t have enough evidence to make the case. Unless they can get the suspect to confess, they’re not going to. They’ve tried almost all the tricks of their trade to get them to admit they did it, but have come up empty. They’re down to their last trick.

It’s time to turn to the supernatural. They put the suspect in a darkened room and make them wait, alone. After enough time has passed, a panel in the wall quietly opens, revealing a skeleton with glowing red eyes. Blue lights flash and a voice emanates from the surreal inquisitor. It demands the suspect confess. And the suspect, scared out of their wits, does. The police have their confession, which they’ve filmed and recorded for use in a court of law. Case closed.

Or at least, that’s how Helene Adelaide Shelby imagined how a confession might be obtained when she filed a patent for her invention of an Apparatus for Obtaining Criminal Confessions on 16 August 1927. Here’s an excerpt from U.S. Patent 1,749,090, which she was finally awarded on 4 March 1930:

The present invention relates to a new and useful apparatus for obtaining confessions from culprits, or those suspected of the commission of crimes, and photographically recording these confessions, in the form of sound waves, in conjunction with their pictures, depicting their every expression and emotion, to be preserved for later reproduction as evidence against them.

The primary object of my invention is the provision of an apparatus for the creation of illusory effects calculated to impress the subject with their being of a supernatural character and to so work upon his imagination as to enable an inquisitor operating in conjunction with-the recording system to obtain confessions and graphically record them by light action under the control of electric impulses governed by varying intensities of sound waves….

My apparatus for obtaining confessions of guilt from criminals undergoing examination comprises a novel combination of well known elements, arranged in such manner and combination as to produce, when operated, a state of mind calculated to cause him, if guilty, to make confession thereof, the apparatus further operating to record photographically his every expression and emotion, while, at the same time, simultaneously recording his examiners questions and the replies thereto.

The illustrations from her patent reveal the secrets of the supernatural character she envisioned, “a figure in the form of a skeleton”, with eyes lit by red lightbulbs to emit “an unnatural ghastly glow”:

There’s a movie camera rigged up to peer through the nose of a skeleton that’s been propped up and cinematically lit behind the sliding panel to the suspect interrogation room to be as spooky as possible. A megaphone transmits the police interrogator’s voice while a microphone records the verbal communication, fully synchronized with the film of the suspect and permanently recorded to be projected with sound on a screen later.

That recording system may be the most remarkable aspect of the patent. When Helene Adelaide Shelby filed the patent in August 1927, it was the era of silent films. It wasn’t until October 1927 that The Jazz Singer would be released to movie theaters to become the first “full-length” movie production to feature fully synchronized dialogue spoken by its actors on screen. It used the Vitaphone system, which played a wax disc recording of the movie’s sound in sync with the film’s scenes.

Shelby’s invention, on the other hand, appears to utilize a system similar to the Movietone sound system, a sound-on-film technology that was just starting to be used in Hollywood at the time the patent was filed.

Alas, we couldn’t find any record of any police department utilizing Shelby’s invention. Nor could we find any record of such a system being used to obtain a criminal confession. Not even in the movies.