JOHN GRAY, B.Sc. 



By G. UDNY YULE. 



Readers of " Knowledge " will have heard with 

 regret that Mr. John Gray, the inventor of the 

 curious and interesting machine for estimating 

 mental characteristics, described in "Knowledge" 

 of December, 1910, passed away at the end of April, 

 1912, as the result of an attack of pneumonia, and a 

 a few details with regard to his career will prove 

 acceptable. 



Gray was born in 1854, 

 at Strichen, Aberdeenshire, 

 and was educated as an 

 engineer at the University 

 of Edinburgh and the Royal 

 School of Mines, London ; 

 he obtained the Associate- 

 ship of the School in Metal- 

 lurgy in 1878, and the de- 

 gree of B.Sc. (Engineering) 

 at Edinburgh in the follow- 

 ing year. In 1878 he en- 

 tered the Patent Office, and 

 at the time of his death 

 held the position of Exam- 

 iner, specialising largely in 

 patents relating to electrical 

 inventions. During the 

 earlier part of his life, Gray's 

 interests lay almost wholly 

 in matters relating to phy- 

 sics and electrical engineer- 

 ing. He was a fellow of 

 the Physical Society from 

 1879 to' 1905, and an Asso- 

 ciate of the Institution of 



Electrical Engineers from 



Figure 139. The late John Gray, B.Sc. 



1887 to 1902. For some 



twenty years, even to the year before his death, he 

 was a regular and valued contributor to The Electrical 

 Review. To many students of physics his book on 

 electrical influence machines, which was published 

 in 1890, and reached a second edition in 190.3, will 

 be well known. 



His first contribution to anthropology was a paper 

 on the history of the place of his birth, published in 

 The Transactions of the Biichan Field Club for 189.3. 

 This was followed by several other contributions to 

 the Transactions of the Club, and, with the co- 

 operation of members of the Club, an anthropometric 

 survey of some fourteen thousand school children 

 was carried out on a scheme devised by Gray, the 

 results of which were published in its Transactions 

 in a joint review by Gray and Tocher in The Journal 

 of the Anthropological Institute (1900). These Aber- 

 deenshire surveys paved the way for the survey of 



the whole of the school children of Scotland. A 

 committee was formed consisting of Sir Wm. Turner, 

 Professor Reid, Mr. Gray and Mr. Tocher, financial 

 assistance obtained from the Royal Society Govern- 

 ment Grant Committee, and the survey organised 

 and very successfully carried out by Mr. Gray and 

 Mr. Tocher. Grav's memoir on the results was 

 published in The Journal of the Anthropological 



Institute for 1907. Mr. 

 Gray acted as Secretary of 

 the Anthropometric Com- 

 mittee of the British Asso- 

 ciation (1902-8), and in 

 1903, in conjunction with 

 Professor D.J. Cunningham, 

 he submitted to the Inter- 

 departmental Committee on 

 Physical Deterioration a 

 scheme for an anthropo- 

 metric committee of the 

 British Isles. 



Gray possessed very 

 marked mechanical abili- 

 ties, and devised a number 

 of new instruments or new 

 forms of instrument for 

 anthropometric work, e.g., 

 a portable stature meter, 

 callipers, a radiometer, a 

 perigraph or instrument 

 for drawing contours of 

 skulls or bones, and an 

 adaptation 

 tintometer 

 the colour 

 eyes. During the last few 

 years he had been specially interested in the machine 

 referred to at the commencement of this notice. In 

 its first form this instrument measured the speed at 

 which the observer ceased to see flicker in a revolving 

 disc coloured in black and white segments, the disc 

 being replaced in the later and improved form 

 (" Knowledge" loc. cit.) by a revolving mirror 

 reflecting alternately white and coloured light. The 

 actual speed was very nearly constant for the same 

 observer, but varied greatly for different persons, and 

 seemed to exhibit remarkable relations to the mental 

 characteristics. He was still at work on this machine 

 at the time of his death. 



That Gray possessed not only scientific abilities 

 and skill in mechanical invention, but also great 

 capacity for organisation, will have been evident 

 from his work on the anthropometric surveys. This 

 capacity he placed at the service of the Anthropo- 



of Lovibond's 



for analysing 



of hair, skin or 



141 



