A Product of Its Time: Cold War ‘Fruit Machine’ Now Basis for Federal Lawsuit
It’s not fiction — although it sounds like something straight out of a dystopian novel. The so-called “fruit machine” was a homosexuality detection system commissioned by the Canadian government during the Cold War — and developed largely by a psychologist at Carleton University in Ottawa — to keep LGBT people out of the public service or military. While the machine is long gone, its legacy is …