Robert F. Borkenstein: the Breathalyzer, and the legend of the color camera

1912–2002 · BORN AND FORMED HERE, THE INVENTION MADE IN INDIANAPOLIS

The man: Robert Frank Borkenstein was born in Fort Wayne on 31 August 1912 and raised here; the Depression ended his schooling, and he worked in Fort Wayne as a photographic technician — the local telling that his color-film expertise was somehow behind the invention of the color camera circulates to this day and is printed here as what even its friendliest chroniclers call it: a legend that is hard to nail down. The documented career began when the Indiana State Police hired him in 1936 for its new criminology laboratory in Indianapolis; he rose to captain and laboratory director, and there, working in the line of Rolla N. Harger's Drunkometer, he built the first working model of the Breathalyzer in February 1954 — in Indianapolis, in the partially dirt-floored basement of his Indianapolis home, by the most detailed account — patented it the same year, and published the instrument's science in 1961. From 1958 he was an Indiana University professor, founding its forensic science program; the National Safety Council inducted him into its Safety and Health Hall of Fame International in 1988. He died at Bloomington in August 2002 (10 August in the forensic-science obituary and the standard references; 15 August in the Indiana Historical Bureau's account — the variance is carried, not resolved). The Breathalyzer changed how the world polices drunk driving, and its inventor was a Fort Wayne boy who learned his trade handling film in this city; the invention itself is Indianapolis and Bloomington work, and this entry's geography says exactly that.

Sources:

1. Alan Hunter, "Robert Borkenstein — The Hoosier Who Invented the Breathalyzer" — the 31 August 1912 Fort Wayne birth, the photographic-technician years, the color-camera legend flagged as such, the February 1954 basement construction, the State Police and IU careers, the 1988 Hall of Fame induction.
2. Obituary, Journal of Forensic Sciences, Vol. 48 No. 3 (May 2003), via Wikipedia — the 1954 patent and first model, the 1961 scientific description, the Bloomington death date of 10 August 2002.
3. Indiana Historical Bureau, Indiana History Blog, "The Man Behind the Breathalyzer" — the Fort Wayne birth, the Drunkometer collaboration context, the IU chairmanship; its 15 August death date carried as the variant.
4. Indianapolis Monthly (December 2024) — the Breathalyzer's invention dating to 1954 in the partially dirt-floored Indianapolis basement.