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APPENDIX
A.—COMPOSITE PORTRAITURE.
THE object and methods of Composite Portraiture will be best explained by the
following extracts from memoirs describing its successive stages, published in 1878, 1879,
and 1881 respectively
I. COMPOSITE PORTRAITS, MADE BY COMBINING
THOSE OF MANY DIFFERENT PERSONS INTO A SINGLE
RESULTANT FIGURE.
[Extract from Memoir read
before the Anthropological Institute, in 1878.]
I submit to the Anthropological Institute my first results in carrying out a process that I
suggested last August [1877] in my presidential address to the Anthropological Subsection
of the British Association at Plymouth, in the following words
“Having obtained drawings or photographs of several persons alike in most respects, but
differing in minor details, what sure method is there of extracting the typical characteristics from
them? I may mention a plan which had occurred both to Mr. Herbert Spencer and myself, the
principle of which is to superimpose optically the various drawings, and to accept the aggregate
result. Mr. Spencer suggested to me in conversation that the drawings reduced to the same scale
might be traced on separate pieces of transparent paper and secured one upon another, and then held
between the eye and the light. I have attempted this with some success. My own idea was to throw
faint images of the several portraits, in succession, upon the same sensitised photographic plate. I
may add that it is perfectly easy to superimpose optically two portraits by means of a stereoscope,
and that a person who is used to handle instruments will find a common double eyeglass fitted with
stereoscopic lenses to be almost as effectual and far handier than the boxes sold in shops.”
Mr. Spencer, as he informed me, had actually devised an instrument, many years ago,
for tracing mechanically, longitudinal, transverse, and horizontal sections of heads on
transparent paper, intending to superimpose them, and to obtain an average result by
transmitted light.
Since, my address was published, I have, caused trials to be made, and have found as a
matter of fact, that the photographic
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