From: martin.kratz@mail.NOSPAMtelepac.pt (Martin Kratz) Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology Subject: Re: E_Meter "carrier wave" Date: 9 Feb 1997 12:25:45 GMT Organization: Order Of The Peacock Angel Lines: 234 Message-ID: <5dkfo9$epl@duke.telepac.pt> References: <32F21F3D.2DC0@videotron.ca> NNTP-Posting-Host: odm1_p11.telepac.pt X-Newsreader: WinVN 0.99.7 Hello, I'm an electronics engineer, so that ominous e-meter interested me, also because I've designed such a thing myself 20 years ago as a contribution to a project week my junior high school ran by then. It was meant to be used with plants rather than with humans (which I'd consider immoral). Really worked with ivy, still can't believe it... I'm working, among other topics, in the medical electronics field right now. I don't care too much for the territorial struggle christians and scientos are involved in these days in Germany; however I do care for any irresponsible use of electronics. Based on that, here are a few remarks to Co$'s e-meter: Device safety According to european laws, devices that are designed to be brought into electrical contact with human beings have to be approved by government authorities. The (though quite expensive) approval shouldn't establish a problem concerning the e-meter if, 1. the simultaneous connection of both the electrodes and the household current charging unit is impossible (for the connectors hinder themselves mutually), i.e. not separated by a mere switch contact or just "prohibited" in the users manual, and 2. the device does not generate high voltage internally (for example to supply a CCFL gas discharge LCD background illumination). The posts given in the appendix seem to indicate that at least the first approval condition is not met by the e-meter. Things got worse since the upcoming of the Mark VII which allows a supervisor unit, being located in another room of the building, to be connected up. Ground potential differences between the two rooms may cause additional safety problems here. Tilman Hausherrs usenet post shows that the e-meter topic had been brought to the attention of the german T?V (the main german technical approval agency) in the past but the T?V only labelled the device as "dangerous" but failed to take effective measures against the further use of it. Measurement principle The schematics posted on Dave Touretzky's homepage (http://www.cs.cmu.edu/People/dst/Secrets/E-Meter/) show that a DC current is being employed for the resistance measurement, but that's inappropriate if electrolytes are involved within the measuring object. Practically all body fluids of all living creatures (and especially sweat) are electrolytes. Bringing these into contact with electrodes will result in electrolysis, i.e. separating charge carriers (here: anions and cations) and thus building up an electromotive force as a consequence - a battery has formed (electrochemical potential). A resistance measurement relying on DC yields results in which both the resistance being investigated AND the generated battery voltage will show up. The two influences cannot be separated subsequently. The battery voltage depends, among others, on whether, and if yes, with what water (ion concentration) and using what detergent (pH value) the PC has washed his hands prior to the e-meter session; besides upon type and history (contamination state) of the electrode material. In ideal case, if both electrodes were completely identical, the potentials built up in the left and the right skin/electrode pairs would cancel themselves out mutually, making this paragraph pointless - but that's just not the way things are in reality (which, as we Criminal Liars all know, is what you can get away with). Anyone who has touched the terminals of a VT or FET voltmeter yet will agree here. Sure it'd be possible to come close to the ideal by completely covering the electrodes with platinum or 99999-grade gold, which would, to some extent, justify the price of the e-meter. However the correct answer to this problem would be to apply an AC-based impedance measurement technique involving capacitive coupling to the measuring object, which would block the electrolysis potential from entering the measurement circuitry. Already my 20-years-old plant project worked this way (for a cartoon on it check http://www.demon.co.uk/castle/helena/kobrin.gif). A gliding autoranging feature could also be featured easily, allowing for truly independent scale-shift (offset) and scale-spread (gain) controls over the entire measurement range. Connections to subsequent processing and recording equipment should be made by fiberoptics only, for safety and credibility (to avoid ground loops) reasons. As stated above, battery operation is imperative. It appears to me that the only serious scientific reason to stick to resistance rather than to impedance measurement would be if LRH had considered his PCs exhibiting a nonlinear resistance (i.e. a resistor that's value depends upon the voltage across it), which would have been correct since electrolytes usually react nonlinearly, but very slowly, to voltage changes due to the poor charge carrier moveability (involved here are Na+ and Ca+ ions having to cross semipermeable cell diaphragms), excluding any native AC-based techniques (so the idea of varying the voltage across the PC is not quite as ridiculous as "Alec" assumed in his post). An ohmmeter taking this effect into consideration should be able to set the voltage across the measuring object at the operator's will, rendering voltage-dependent readings for nonlinear objects while maintaining its readout constant with a plain-vanilla resistor connected up. The above mentioned battery effect could be cancelled here by commutated autozeroing (CAZ) technique, i.e. switching off the measurement voltage for short periods of time on a regular basis at a frequency considered appropriate, and, while in this state, measuring and storing the remaining voltage (which would be the electrolysis voltage) to subsequently correct the voltage across the PC with it, but calculating the resistance using the uncorrected, operator-desired value. The obtained battery voltage itself might even be considered a Co$-useful information by attributing it to some Battery-Thetan Ex-Centrifugal Forz. However, telling from the schematics, we can rule out the idea that LRH had all this in mind since his design approach is clearly not aimed at this target; the meter needle shouldn't move when the TA knob is being operated with the reference resistor hooked, if it were. Circuitry The absence of operational amplifiers speaks for itself. Even in the sixties (when the first monolithic integrated version (uA709) became available, at quite a prohibitive price though), they could have been designed with discrete transistors glued together for better thermal coupling. Because of this, and because of the use of germanium transistors in at least the earlier verions, the e-meter should exhibit a horrible temperature coefficient. Conclusions All in all, quite an unscientific approach, which eventually will force someone of us Pig-Headed Sceptics to undergo the effort and closer examine the Co$'s idea of "science"; seems to be non- or pre-cartesian (surely Co$'d put it, like, "Having Even Transcended Descartes" - pardon the categoric conjunctive). Sheds some light upon an organisation which dares to include the term "science" into their name. Please no one claim all this was not yet known when LRH applied for his patent - impeance measurement gear and opamps and stuff were all well-established long before LRH was born (here I refer to his mere body, not his ten-to-the-umpteenth years-old Thetan. Martin In the realm of the blind, the one-eyed is supposed to be king. - German proverb Whereas the two-eyed is considered a common-threat monster. - MK Appendix Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology,alt.clearing.technology From: tilman@berlin.snafu.de (Tilman Hausherr) Subject: E-Meter dangerous ? Date: Sat, 03 Jun 1995 14:05:05 GMT Message-ID: <3qpq7u$kt9@unlisys.unlisys.net> References: <3q7vti$aeb@utopia.hacktic.nl> <3q9b9c$ql1@nyx10.cs.du.edu> <3qbu4r$q8n@nyx10.cs.du.edu> A german organisation for security of electrical devices (I think it was T ?V Rheinland) labeled the e-meter dangerous because there is no label that it should never be used with the charging device plugged in, which could lead to electrocution of the person being questioned. Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology,alt.clearing.technology Subject: Re: E-Meter dangerous ? Date: 3 Jun 1995 15:24:45 GMT Message-ID: <3qpurt$kdi@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu> References: <3q7vti$aeb@utopia.hacktic.nl> <3qbu4r$q8n@nyx10.cs.du.edu> <3qpq7u$kt9@unlisys.unlisys.net> this is fascinating. i once read an account (in a TR bulletin, no less!) which can only be interpreted as the pc being electrocuted by the e-meter! of course, the TR described it as the PC releasing a great deal of "charge", but the description clearly fits with electrocution (cans pitted and melted, burn marks on the pc, etc.) i've refrained from mentioning this before because i no longer have the documentation to prove it. disclaimer: i am posting from memory; details may be inaccurate. From: crockwel@copper.ucs.indiana.edu (christi l rockwell) Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology,alt.clearing.technology Subject: Re: E-Meter dangerous ? Date: 04 Jun 1995 02:16:25 GMT Message-ID: References: <3q7vti$aeb@utopia.hacktic.nl> <3qbu4r$q8n@nyx10.cs.du.edu> <3qpq7u$kt9@unlisys.unlisys.net> <3qpurt$kdi@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu> yeah... and you're memory certainly isn't the best :-) it was an HCOB not a TR. i don't remember if the HCOB described it as the PC releasing "charge", what i recall is that that was my ex's response to what that could have been. you see people collect charge inside them and that can be enough of a charge to electrocute themselves... yeah... right. i think you're right about the cans being pitted and the burn marks... minor thing's you're leaving out: the auditor described the PC as looking like he was "melting" which i have been told is something that happens when someone is electrocuted. the bulletin instructs auditors if faced with this situation to continue the auditing to get the PC past this point. if anyone is interested in tracking down the original source i would be very interested. if you have copies of HCOB's from the early 80's it's in there somewhere... i remember they were orange books. unfortunately this is one of the sources i was mentioning before that i seriously regret throwing out. c. From: ez022854@dale.ucdavis.edu (Kent Truscott) Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology,alt.clearing.technology Subject: Re: E-Meter dangerous ? Followup-To: alt.religion.scientology,alt.clearing.technology Date: 4 Jun 1995 17:54:00 GMT Message-ID: <3qsrvo$ibb@mark.ucdavis.edu> References: <3q7vti$aeb@utopia.hacktic.nl> <3q9b9c$ql1@nyx10.cs.du.edu> <3qbu4r$q8n@nyx10.cs.du.edu> <3qpq7u$kt9@unlisys.unlisys.net> Tilman Hausherr (tilman@berlin.snafu.de) wrote: The Mark V has charging circuits built right into it: a few diodes and a capacitor. (I know this from opening one and tracing out the circuit.) To get the details, get a copy of US Patent 4,459,995 (Date: July 17, 1984; Assignee: Lafayette R. Hubbard, Sussex, England) from the Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks in the US. The patent may actually be for a Mark VI, but it almost exactly matches my tracing of the Mark V (the only difference that I recall is that the Mark V had a small resistor (15 ohms?) on the wiper arm of the sensitivity potentiometer, probably to limit maximum current through one of the transistors). The e-meter works on batteries alone -- as long as you don't plug it in! The plug-in is only to recharge the batteries. I'm looking at the patent schematic right now, and it appears that the only part of the circuit still connected to the batteries during recharging is the needle assembly, itself; the resistance bridge, transistors, and cans are all disconnected. So, for this circuit at least, "auditing during charging" doesn't seem to be possible. There are other circuits, though. Kent