In 1901, Henry C. Lavery, a self-described "profound thinker" of Superior,
Wisconsin became certain that phrenology was true and spent his next 26 years
endeavoring to put this science into a machine. On January 29, 1931,
he and his partner, Frank P. White, a businessman who had taken his life
savings of $39,000 out of stock in a local sandpaper manufacturer - the 3M
company - to finance the venture, announced the invention of such a machine
- the "Psycograph."
The machine consisted of 1,954 parts in a metal carrier with a continuous
motor-driven belt inside a walnut cabinet containing statements about 32
mental faculties. These faculties were each rated 1 through 5, "deficient"
to "very superior," so that there were 160 possible statements but an
almost unlimited number of possible combinations.
The "score" was determined by the way the 32 probes, each with five
contact points in the headpiece, made contact with the head. The subject
sat in a chair connected to the machine and the headpiece was lowered and
adjusted. The operator then pulled back a lever that activated the
belt-driven motor, which then received low-voltage signals from the headpiece
and stamped out the appropriate statement for each faculty consecutively.
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Thirty three machines were built, and a local office in Minneapolis flourished.
The machines were leased to entrepreneurs throughout the country for
$2,000 down plus $35 a month. They were popular attractions for theater,
lobbies and department stores, which found them good traffic builders during
the depression. Two enterprising promoters set up shop in the Black
Forest Village at the 1934 Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago and
netted $200,000 at their standing-room-only booth!
Phrenology in Europe had been abandoned as nonsense long before this time.
The brief success of the Psycograph lasted until the mid-thirties when
the company closed because of increasing skepticism and declining income.
The machines were returned and packed away in storage until the
mid-sixties, when John White, the founder's son, and I put several back into
working order.
From A Brief History of Phrenology & The Psycograph by Curator
Bob McCoy, Museum of Questionable Medical Devices.
George Burgess - Practiced Phrenology in the Bristol Arcades from 1861 to 1901.*
George Combe:
Elements of Phrenology This site by Peter Friesen also links to
Friesen's history of phrenology and "A Phrenologist's Assessment of Charlotte
Bronte."
Phrenology and
Fine Arts by the Boston College Fine Arts Department includes a collection
of images from S. Wells' New Phisiognomy, or Signs of Character, 1871,
and an interactive guide to phrenology (the map of the brain).
Phrenology:
the History of Brain Localization (PDF) by Renato M.E. Sabbatini, the director
of the Center of Biomedical Informatics and professor of Medical Informatics
of the Faculty of Medicine of the State University of Campinas, Brazil. A
history of phrenology and its creator, Franz Joseph Gall.
Graphics: Phrenology Bust and Brain of the Skull are
from the Psycograph poster, The Museum of Questionable Medical Devices.
Phrenology machine illustration: US Patent 1897941, Henry C.
Lavery, Anatomical Measuring and Recording Machines, Feb. 14, 1993, Fig.
1.
almost unlimited number of possible combinations.
The "score" was determined by the way the 32 probes, each with five
contact points in the headpiece, made contact with the head. The subject
sat in a chair connected to the machine and the headpiece was lowered and
adjusted. The operator then pulled back a lever that activated the
belt-driven motor, which then received low-voltage signals from the headpiece
and stamped out the appropriate statement for each faculty consecutively.
[large image 12K]
