Breathalyzer Technology Has Come a Long Way

The concept of the breathalyzer was being worked on well before the 1930s. The principle of the breathalyzer is also fairly simple. What a breathalyzer does is it measures a person’s Blood Alcohol Content by analyzing that person’s breath.

The presence of alcohol in a person’s breath had been discovered as early as 1874. Research done in 1927 and conducted by Emile Bogen showed that the alcohol content of 2 litres of expired air was just slightly greater than the alcohol content of 1cc of urine. Back then the sample air was collected in a football.

This led to an earnest attempt to develop a device that could be used in roadside tests. Drinking and driving had become a very serious issue early in the 1900s.

The first such device intended for use by police was called the “drunkometer”. It was developed in 1938 by a college professor called Harger. In fact the drunkometer was essentially a portable laboratory. The subject breathed into a balloon inside the machine, and then this sample was pumped through a solution that would change color if there was alcohol in the air sample. The more the color changed, the more alcohol was present in the breath, and therefore the higher the blood alcohol level.

Recently breathalyzer technology has been taken to new lengths with the development of the device called the breath key. This device fits on a driver’s key chain and is about the size of a typical key fob or key chain remote. It was designed by breath alcohol testing specialist Ed Gollar, who also developed the breath alcohol ignition interlock systems used by courts in almost 40 states in the US. The breath key was designed as a personal breath alcohol testing device that is small, affordable and reliable.

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