Lasso of Truth period before, during and after World War I, on understanding and perfecting the systolic blood-pressure test while working on his Ph.D. in psychology at Harvard University. Blood pressure was one of several elements measured in the polygraph tests that were being perfected since as far back as Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso, in 1895. Marston's wife, psychologist and lawyer Elizabeth Holloway Marston, one of his inspirations for the Wonder Woman character, also played a key role in his lie detector research. But the lie detector had nothing to do with Marston's creation of the Magic Lasso. Wonder Woman's "Magic Lasso" or
Polygraph blood pressure for police cases, a 1904 device by Vittorio Benussi used to measure breathing, and an abandoned project by American William Moulton Marston which used blood pressure to examine German prisoners of war (POWs). Marston’s machine indicated a strong positive correlation between systolic blood pressure and lying. Marston wrote a second paper on the concept in 1915, when finishing his undergraduate studies. He entered Harvard Law School and graduated in 1918, re-publishing his earlier work in 1917. Marston's main inspiration for the device was his wife, Elizabeth Holloway Marston. "According to Marston’s son, it was his mother Elizabeth, Marston’s