The idea of a mechanism to measure the alcohol a person has consumed dates back quite far. A 1927 issue of Popular Science speaks of a device to 鈥樷��, suggesting that housewives use W.D McNally鈥檚 new invention to see if their 鈥榚rrant鈥� husbands had been out drinking. The device is said to use chemicals that change colour, but what chemicals they were is unknown. This is however the same mechanism behind the first portable breathalyzer just years later.
The first stable breathalyzer for out-of-lab use was developed by Rolla N. Harger in 1931 and named, hilariously, the . This early breathalyzer functioned very differently from modern ones: a colour change due to a reaction between alcohol in the breath and acidified potassium permanganate. Lacking a quantitative scale it simply relied on the idea that more purple colour equaled more alcohol.
The first breathalyzer as we currently know it was developed by in 1958. Borkenstein coupled a photometer with a reaction between the alcohol in a subject鈥檚 breath and potassium dichromate.
This method allowed quantitative measurements of , and let us move away from simply declaring people 鈥�.鈥�
His breathalyzer was a tremendous leap forward for law enforcement and road safety, as it gave police a non-invasive, quantitative and rapid method to confirm that somebody was too drunk to drive.
Since Borkenstein鈥檚 breathalyzer, the technology hasn鈥檛 changed that much (read about it here). Except that breathalyzers are now less than $20 and small enough to fit on keychains.
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