psychographn.

1854 O. Meredith Let. 13 Feb. in Lett. to R. & E. B. Browning (1936) 65 Among the Patents lately issued..is one to a German of the name of Wagner, for an instrument or machine which he calls a Psychograph and which is to enable the possessor of it, by means of Electro-magnetism, to read the thoughts of others!

1899 A. MacDonald Exper. Study Children xxi.1164 The psychograph is a new apparatus for the study of trembling. The instrument..was designed by Professor Sommer, of Griesen, Germany.

1938 Jrnl. Criminal Law & Criminol. 29 289 Father Summers in his self-styled psychograph or pathometer employs only an instrument for recording the psycho-galvanic reaction of the skin.

2002 Contra Costa Times (Calif.) (Nexis) 10 Feb. a24 McCoy already has taught museum staff members how to operate the antique ‘psychograph’, a contraption that..deduces a patient's personality from reading the bumps on the head, then suggests suitable careers, from actor to zeppelin attendant.

1870 Overland Monthly July 89/1 We photographed forever upon our longing memories the multitudinous grandeurs and the unspeakable beauties of that incomparable valley. Then, quickly closing our eyes, that the spiritual operator within might the more surely fix the marvelous psychograph, we slowly betook ourselves to the forest trail.]

1878 ‘M. A. Oxon.’ Psychography 22 He..obtained his..Psychographs by the simple process of putting blank paper on the table of his room.

1920 London Mag. July 443/1 Most puzzling of all forms of super-normal pictures is the psychograph—so-called because it is assumed to be psychic in its origin and production.

1939 H. Price Fifty Years Psychical Res. i. 35 If a message in writing or a drawing spontaneously appears on a photographic plate, with or without it being exposed in the camera it is known as a scotograph or a psychograph.

1973 D. A. Spencer Focal Dict. Photogr. Technol. 496 All available evidence suggests that these psychographs were fakes or the result of a combination of chemical fog and wishful thinking.

2001 J. Nickell Real-life X-Files xlii. 260 David Duguid expanded his repertoire from spirit paintings to spirit photographs and even ‘psychographs’ (supposedly noncamera spirit or psychic photos).

1916 G. Bradford Union Portraits p. x The best name for the product of the psychographer's art is ‘psychographs’. But ‘portraits’ has the sanction of high authority and example.

1932 Sunday Times 6 Mar. 8/2 It was with some anxiety I saw Dame Una Pope-Hennessy was committed to writing a psychograph of Walter Scott.

1974 Times Lit. Suppl. 11 Oct. 1130/3 Wilson's penetrating psychograph, ‘The Two Scrooges’, coincided with George Orwell's revaluation in focusing upon a great novelist whose very popularity had caused him to be critically neglected.

1996 German Q. 69 250/2 Tales of conversion should be seen not as reliable psychographs, but rather as ritualized, dramatic spectacle.