GALTON: The First Psychometrician?

E ver wonder how many brush strokes it takes to create a painting? Or how to measure boredom, attraction to the opposite sex, the efficacy of prayer, or the intelligence of earthworms? Sir Francis Galton wondered about these things and set out to develop procedures and instruments by which such questions could be answered and replicated . In fact, he counted everything that appeared to have any form of regularity. He counted brush strokes while sitting for his own portrait at two different times in his life . Karl Pearson sug gested his "pained" expression was due to his concentration while counting . It took about 24,000 strokes for each painting. He counted spikes of flowers on trees . By counting the spikes of flowers on a typical tree, and then the number of trees along a one mile stretch ofroad, he estimated that the number "one million" could be represented as the flowers on a row of trees ten miles in length . He counted the fidgets of persons sitting through a boring lecture. He investigated the "instances in which men who . are more or less illustrious have eminent kinfolks ." This was the basis for his argument that genius is hereditary (Galton, 1869) . One conclusion was that great commanders tend to be small because their relative chance of being shot varies as the square root of the product of their height and weight . When looking at facial features, he wondered whether persons with differentiated mental characteristics also have differentiated physical features . He actually attempted the development of composite portraits for "ideal criminal" classes . He also looked at the numbers of attractive, indifferent, and repellent-looking women . The objective was to form a "Beauty Map" of the British Isles. Galton's work produced many "firsts ." His investigation of points of similarity between twins was the first use of control groups in psychological research . His research into varia tions in weather conditions resulted in the first published meteorological maps of Europe . His work on fingerprint characteristics led to the legal use of fingerprint identification . He counted earthworms on a rainy sidewalk when he was helping Charles Darwin investigate the intelligence of