Galton's Anthropometric Laboratory (1884)

THE LABORATORY IN FIVE NUMBERS

A fairground booth that produced the first big data set of human variation

3dto be measuredThreepence a visit; a superintendent took the measurements.

6 × 36 fta long, narrow enclosureBehind a trellis designed to make passers-by curious, at the main entrance by the dining rooms.

9,337people measuredIncluding 4,726 adult men and 1,657 adult women.

17measurements eachSight, colour sense, breathing power, pull and squeeze, swiftness of blow, span, height sitting and standing, weight and more.

3,678more, laterAfter the exhibition the laboratory moved to the South Kensington Museum, where it ran for about six years.

WALKING THE ENCLOSURE

Seven kinds of measurement, about fifteen minutes

The schedule grouped its entries roughly as below. Pick a station to see what was recorded and how. Galton chose quick, cheap measures that an attendant could take on thousands of strangers, not the careful introspection of a German laboratory.

Body

Height standingHeight sittingSpan of armsWeight

Standard anthropometry. Heights became the most-used part of the records, alongside his family records for studying inheritance.Sources [1][5]

“JUDGEMENT OF EYE” · FROM THE 1884 SCHEDULE

Divide the line by eye

Galton's schedule recorded the error percentage in dividing a 15-inch line into two parts and into three. Click where you'd cut, then reveal. Your error is shown as a percentage of the line, the way the card recorded it.

On screen, not with Galton's apparatus; your card at the top records these values. No norms from 1884 are applied.

“HIGHEST AUDIBLE NOTE”

Galton's whistle, in a browser

Galton built an adjustable whistle to find the highest note a person could hear, and found that the upper limit falls with age. The schedule kept a line for it, though the exhibition hall was too noisy to test hearing well. Press start: a tone rises from 8,000 Hz. Stop it when it disappears.

Use headphones at low volume. Speakers and earbuds often cut off above 16–18 kHz, so this partly measures your equipment. No 1884 norms are applied.

—Hz

GALTON'S OWN WARNINGNot a random sampleHe noted that the people who chose to be measured were not random specimens of the crowd, and the crowd itself was no fair sample of the nation.

CONDITIONSLight and noiseLight was “rarely sufficient” and varied through the day, so absolute eyesight results meant little. The schedule itself says hearing could hardly be tested owing to the noise and echoes.

LEGACYStatistics and eugenicsThe lab and his family records were Galton's data for applying statistics to human variation. They fed the Eugenics Record Office, founded in 1904, a history the lab named after him later had to reckon with.

WHAT CAME OUT OF THE CARDS

From booth data to correlation, and a century-late reanalysis

In “Co-relations and their measurement,” Galton used measurements such as height, arm length and head size to define the correlation coefficient. Height, forearm and head length data came from his laboratory.Sources [8]

FRANCIS GALTON · 1822–1911

Explorer, statistician, founder of eugenics

1822Born 16 February near Birmingham; Charles Darwin was his half-cousin.

1850–52Explores south-west Africa (now Namibia); awarded the Royal Geographical Society's gold medal.

1863Meteographica: publishes some of the first weather maps and identifies the anticyclone.

1869Hereditary Genius argues that ability runs in families.

1883Inquiries into Human Faculty coins “eugenics” and describes his whistle and other tests.

1884Opens the Anthropometric Laboratory at the International Health Exhibition.

1888–89Defines correlation; Natural Inheritance on regression.

1892Finger Prints sets out a classification system adopted by police.

1909–11Knighted in 1909; dies 17 January 1911, leaving his estate to found a chair of eugenics at UCL.

The laboratory can't be separated from Galton's aim. He wanted to measure inherited human qualities in order to breed for them, and coined “eugenics” for that programme in 1883. In 2020 University College London renamed buildings and lecture theatres that had honoured him and Karl Pearson.

REFERENCES

[1]Galton, F. (1885). On the Anthropometric Laboratory at the late International Health Exhibition. Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 14, 205–218.galton.org

[2]Galton, F. (1885). Some results of the Anthropometric Laboratory.galton.org (PDF)

[3]Wellcome Collection. Completed Schedules from the International Health Exhibition (GALTON/2/4/18/18/1).wellcomecollection.org

[4]Cain, J. Anthropometric Laboratories in the UK and Ireland.profjoecain.net

[5]Our Data Ourselves. Statistical Anthropometrics.uoregon.edu

[6]Wikipedia. Galton Laboratory.en.wikipedia.org

[7]Wikipedia. Galton whistle.en.wikipedia.org

[8]Galton, F. (1888). Co-relations and their measurement, chiefly from anthropometric data. Proceedings of the Royal Society, 45, 135–145.galton.org (PDF)

[9]Galton, F. (1889). Natural Inheritance. Macmillan.galton.org

[10]Johnson, R. C., McClearn, G. E., Yuen, S., Nagoshi, C. T., Ahern, F. M., & Cole, R. E. (1985). Galton's data a century later. American Psychologist, 40(8), 875–892.doi

[11]Wikipedia. Francis Galton.en.wikipedia.org

[12]UCL (2020). UCL denames buildings named after eugenicists.ucl.ac.uk

Editorial record: new page in this project, built from Galton's 1885 papers (excerpts), his 1888 correlation paper, archive catalogues, the 1985 reanalysis abstract and historians' accounts. The station-by-station apparatus details, the 1888 paper's use of lab data, and the life dates were written from general histories and not re-checked against the sources this turn. One source dates the exhibition to 1885; the exhibition ran in 1884, and the lab moved to the museum afterwards.

KEEP EXPLORING

1890 · Galton's admirerCattell's Mental TestsCattell worked with Galton in Cambridge and named his own battery 'mental tests' in 1890.1880 · The rival laboratoryWundt's Reaction TimeLeipzig studied the general mind with trained observers; Galton measured how ordinary people differ.1905 · The break with sensesBinet-SimonBinet showed that complex tasks, not sensory acuity, tracked school ability.1904 · Correlation appliedSpearman's gSpearman used Galton's correlation idea to argue for a general factor.

Part of the Historical IQ Tests Archive. Editorial content under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Galton's laboratory: threepence to be measured seventeen ways.