The Creator Of Which Iconic Comic Book Character Also Helped Create The Lie Detector?

William Moulton Marston was quite the renaissance man. A Harvard-trained psychologist, he was also an inventor and writer. While many people, especially in the comic community, remember him most for his creation of Wonder Woman in the 1940s, one of his lesser known contributions was an invention that would serve as the foundation for modern lie detectors.

In addition to his accomplishments within the field of Psychology and as a comic book writer, Marston studied the use of systolic blood pressure as a component of lie detection analysis. After hearing his wife talking about how her blood pressure went up when she got made or excited, he began exploring the idea of using blood pressure to analyze emotional states and ultimately used it to study physiological responses to deceptive speech.

Marston’s research would make an appearance in his later comic book writing. Much like a band around the chest of his subjects revealed whether or not they were lying, Wonder Woman’s Lasso of Truth also bound up suspects and helped her to uncover their deceptions.