In 1850 Allan Pinkerton founded the first American private detective agency; in advertisements, the company motto, We Never Sleep was inscribed under a large, unblinking Masonic-like eye, which gave rise to the term private eye.... William J. Burns was an avid user of a Dictograph- a primitive listening device that could be concealed in anything from a clock to a chandelier.... Just as Allan Pinkerton, in the nineteenth century was known as the eye, Burns, In the twentieth century had become the ear.