{"id":3291,"date":"2026-05-18T13:57:48","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T12:57:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/birminghamski.com\/?p=3291"},"modified":"2026-05-18T14:02:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T13:02:16","slug":"francis-galton-a-genius-an-eccentric-and-darwins-cousin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/birminghamski.com\/en\/eternal-3291-francis-galton-a-genius-an-eccentric-and-darwins-cousin","title":{"rendered":"Francis Galton: a genius, an eccentric, and Darwin\u2019s cousin"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Birmingham is traditionally associated with the Industrial Revolution, engineering, and innovation. It was here that technologies were developed that transformed Britain, and for centuries the local factories and workshops attracted people with unconventional thinking. It was here that new technologies were invented, the Industrial Revolution was launched, and the factories<\/a> of the future were built, but at the same time could frighten a provincial vicar half to death with their first rumbling steam locomotive on a nighttime road or walk about with an experimental gas lamp in their hands. This is precisely how the Scottish-born engineer and inventor William Murdoch made his mark in his day, a man whom his religious contemporaries<\/a> nearly branded as a messenger from hell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another local inventor, the printing genius John Baskerville, was a perfectionist; he was so fanatical about the quality of printing paper that his contemporaries marveled at its incredible sheen, which literally \u2018dazzled\u2019 readers. But Francis Galton went further than anyone else: this gentleman tried to measure literally everything he saw around him. And sometimes even things that a normal person would hardly have thought to measure in the first place. On birminghamski.com<\/a> you can read exactly what the founder of Victorian eugenics was counting, what else he was famous for, and why, to his contemporaries, he was not only a scientist, but also a very peculiar eccentric.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n