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The Quadro Tracker, also known as the Positive Molecular Locator, was a "detection device" sold by Quadro Corp. of Harleyville, South Carolina between 1993 and 1996. Around 1,000 were sold to police departments and school districts around the United States on the basis that it could detect hidden drugs, explosives, weapons and lost golf balls. In 1996, the FBI declared it to be a fake and obtained a permanent injunction barring the device from being manufactured or sold. Three principals of Quadro Corp. were charged with mail fraud and conspiracy to commit mail fraud, but were acquitted in a trial held in January 1997. ==Description and claims== The Quadro Tracker was invented by Wade L. Quattlebaum, a former used car salesman from Harleyville, South Carolina. He was said to have devised the Quadro Tracker after he was trying to invent something to find lost golf balls. It was sold through his company, the Quadro Corporation, between 1993 and 1996. Around 1,000 Quadro Trackers were sold at prices of between $400 and $8,000 per unit.〔 The device consisted of three principal components. A "locator card" purportedly containing a "signature" of the object to be detected was inserted into a plastic "card reader" about the size of a tape cassette that could be attached to the user's belt. This was connected to a hand-held unit about long to which a horizontally swivelling metal antenna was attached. The antenna would purportedly point to the item being sought when a suitable locator card was inserted into the "card reader". According to the manufacturers, the Quadro Tracker could be used to detect items as varied as drugs, weapons, explosives, specific people, golf balls, alcohol, precious metal, dead pets or wild game animals. In the most expensive version of the device, costing $8,000, the user could insert Polaroid photographs of the item or person to be detected. According to Quadro Corp., "Quadro units have been designed to locate people from a photograph, as well as from a fingerprint. Thus missing prisoners, or escaped prisoners can be located with ease. The machine will identify an individual, no matter what disguise or surgery is undertaken. It has been tested over a distance of 500 miles, and will track, we believe, at any distance."〔 The device could supposedly even detect drugs after they had been ingested by a person. A marketing brochure stated: "The tracker will also locate specific drugs in solution. This means that even a person who had been using drugs will have traces in their bodily fluids, blood, etc. Thus the Tracker will indicate people who are using drugs, as well as those who are merely carrying it. Therefore extreme caution should be taken if searching a person, or making accusations, as they may, indeed, not be carrying drugs on them!"〔 Quadro Corp. claimed the device worked by oscillating "static electricity produced by the body inhaling and exhaling gases into and out of the lung cavity" to "charge the free-floating neutral electrons of the signature card with the major strength of the signal".〔 The device's mechanism supposedly contained conductors, inductors and oscillators.〔 It was claimed to be able to detect drugs hidden in air-tight containers, a bomb inside a building from outside or a criminal suspect 15 miles away. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Quadro Tracker」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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