I 



I 



Stat'mtical /nvestu/atioim 341 



recorder coiisiHts of a brass disk sliding with a range of about 3" vertically, 

 and rather more than jf" horizontally, so that a neetUe which projects from 

 the disk on picssinj,' a spriiij; is cupal)le of holing alKiut one square inch of 

 visiting card supported on chamois leather. The range is ade(|uate for the 

 record of two, possibly three characters. 



The most complete registrator was one made for Galton by 1 lauksluy ; the 

 needle point is done away with, and the instrument records on tive dials the 

 inunber of separate pressures ou five pins. These pins or stops communicate 

 by a ratchet with a scjiarato index-arm that moves round its own dial. The 

 dials are covered by a plate which can be removed to read oH' the results. The 

 instrument is ^" thick, 4" long and 1|" wide and it can be held un.seen in 

 either hand with a separate Hnger and thumb on each stop. Wlien any 

 finger is pressed on the stop below it the corresponding index-arm records a 

 unit. Guides are placed to keep the fingers in their proper positions. The 

 instnnnent may be used in the pocket or under a loose glove or other cover. 

 "It is possible by its means to take anthropological statistics of any kind 

 among crowds of people without exciting observation, which it is otherwise 

 exceedingly difficult to do'." I may remark that it requires some little 

 training to press with the correct finger. With an in.strument of this kind 

 Galton recorded the percentage of attractive, indifferent and repellent looking 

 women he met in his walks through the streets of various towns witli the 

 object of forming a "Beauty-map" of the Briti.sh Isles — a project he never 

 completed, although he held London to have most and Aberdeen fewest 

 beautiful women of the towns he had observed. He once also remarked to me 

 that he had found Salonika to be the centre of gravity of lying, though I 

 have no direct evidence that lie used a registrator to tick off liars and truth- 

 speakers in his travels in Greece. 



While busy with his Hereditaty Genius, 1869, Galton had noticed how 

 a])t are the families of great men to die out and that genius has l)een asserted 

 to be related to sterility. He endeavoured to explain the matter in the case 

 of the judges and in the case of peei"s by special cau.ses (see our pp. 93-96). 

 De C'andoile also referred to this topic in his Histoire ilea ISciences, 

 four years later, and suggested without matiiematical investigation that 

 families in tiie tiKtle line mu.st always tend to die out, the name becoming ex- 

 tinguished when a son failed to be born. He suggested that a matliematician 

 ought to be able to solve this problem of the extinction of surnames. Galton 

 saw the importance of the determination of the i-ate of extermination of 

 surnames as a preliminary investig.ation to the inquiry as to the dying out 

 of the families of men of ability, in whose cases heredity had been too often 

 traced in the male line only — e.g. the extinction of peerages granted for great 

 achievements — and this e.xtinction of the line attribiited to some une.xplained 

 sterility in able men. Galton accordingly propounded the problem in the 

 Eihtcdtional Times, and there it met with pt)or success at first — one erroneous 

 solution. Ultimately the late H. W. Watson, a pereonal frientl of Galton's, 



' See the paper: "Pocket liegistrator for Anthropological Purposes," liritUit Asuociation 

 Report, Swansea, 1880, p. 625. 



