Does nineteenth‐century nominal record linkage have lessons for the machine‐readable century?

Methods are described for deriving personal and family histories of birth, marriage, procreation, ill health and death, for large populations, from existing civil registrations of vital events and the routine records of ill health. Computers have been used to group together and »link« the separately derived records pertaining to successive events in the lives of the same individuals and families, rapidly and on a large scale. Most of the records employed are already available as machine readable punchcards and magnetic tapes, for statistical and administrative purposes, and only minor modifications have been made to the manner in which these are produced.As applied to the population of the Canadian province of British Columbia (currently about 2 million people) these methods have already yielded substantial information on the risks of disease: a) in the population, b) in relation to various parental characteristics, and c) as correlated with previous occurrences in the family histories.

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Record Linkage for nineteenth-century census returns: automatic or computer-aided?

History and Computing ◽

10.3366/hac.1997.9.1-3.122 ◽

1997 ◽

Vol 9 (1-3) ◽

pp. 122-133 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Peter Tilley ◽

Christopher French

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Record Linkage ◽

Multiple Pass ◽

Computer Aided

Should record linkage for nineteenth century census records be based on multiple pass algorithms using list unique records or are there more effective ways of establishing true matches? This paper considers both multiple pass algorithms and some alternatives, and finds that the alternatives can indeed be more effective.

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A Structured Method for the Recognition of Complex Historical Tables

History and Computing ◽

10.3366/hac.1997.9.1-3.58 ◽

1997 ◽

Vol 9 (1-3) ◽

pp. 58-77

Author(s):

Vitaly Kliatskine ◽

Eugene Shchepin ◽

Gunnar Thorvaldsen ◽

Konstantin Zingerman ◽

Valery Lazarev

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Character Recognition ◽

Optical Character Recognition ◽

Complex Structure ◽

Source Material ◽

Historical Sources ◽

Tax Assessment ◽

Optical Character ◽

Algorithmic Model ◽

Machine Readable

In principle, printed source material should be made machine-readable with systems for Optical Character Recognition, rather than being typed once more. Offthe-shelf commercial OCR programs tend, however, to be inadequate for lists with a complex layout. The tax assessment lists that assess most nineteenth century farms in Norway, constitute one example among a series of valuable sources which can only be interpreted successfully with specially designed OCR software. This paper considers the problems involved in the recognition of material with a complex table structure, outlining a new algorithmic model based on ‘linked hierarchies’. Within the scope of this model, a variety of tables and layouts can be described and recognized. The ‘linked hierarchies’ model has been implemented in the ‘CRIPT’ OCR software system, which successfully reads tables with a complex structure from several different historical sources.

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Biometric Aesthetics

Public ◽

10.1386/public_00009_7 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 30 (60) ◽

pp. 108-125

Author(s):

Robert Heynen

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Face Recognition ◽

Close Reading ◽

Scientific Approach ◽

Francis Galton ◽

Machine Readable ◽

Social Logics

This article examines contemporary biometric science against the backdrop of its development in nineteenth century eugenic and biostatistical practices, most notably the composite photography of Francis Galton. Focusing on automated face recognition, the article argues that contemorary biometric science is inextricable from its aesthetic investments, which in turn shape the ways in which faces and bodies are differentiated in identification systems. Based on a close reading of biometric engineering texts and projects, this aesthetico-scientific approach offers new ways of conceptualizing how biometrics constitutes rather than merely reflects bodies, and encodes racist, misogynist, and other social logics into the conception and design of technologies themselves. These are not biases that can be corrected, as ostensibly progressive biometric projects like IBM’s Diversity in Faces initiative suggest, but rather are inextricable from the biometric desire to render faces and bodies as transparent and machine-readable.

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Studying the Impact of Religion on Fertility in Nineteenth-Century Canada

Social Science History ◽

10.1017/s0145553200012992 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 29 (3) ◽

pp. 373-411

Author(s):

Michael D. Haan

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Areal Unit ◽

Proxy Variables ◽

Weak Evidence ◽

Machine Readable ◽

The Impact ◽

Beta Version

A beta version of the machine-readable 1881 census of Canada is used to assess the efficacy of two proxy variables used to predict fertility: (1) the share of church seats held by various church denominations in an areal unit and (2) the proportion of children with biblical names. Weak evidence is found for both measures, although the article questions whether these relationships can be interpreted as evidence for the importance of religious liberalization as a factor in reducing fertility.

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Perspectives on Historical U.S. Census Undercounts

Social Science History ◽

10.1017/s0145553200017466 ◽

1995 ◽

Vol 19 (4) ◽

pp. 455-466 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Miriam L. King ◽

Diana L. Magnuson

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Record Linkage ◽

National Level ◽

Local Communities ◽

Linkage Studies ◽

Sources Of Information

There are three sources of information about undercounts in nineteenth-century U.S. censuses: demographic analyses of net undercounts by age, sex, and race at the national level; record-linkage studies of gross undercounts for local communities; and contemporary testimony of the types and bases of underenumeration. This article reviews the strengths and limitations of each of these sources, assesses the extent of their agreement, and discusses the bases of their disagreement.

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Emerging modernity in an urban setting: nineteenth-century Bristol revealed in property surveys

Urban History ◽

10.1017/s096392689900022x ◽

1999 ◽

Vol 26 (2) ◽

pp. 191-210 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Spencer Jordan ◽

Peter Wardley ◽

Matthew Woollard

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Urban Development ◽

Economic Activity ◽

Functional Change ◽

Urban Setting ◽

Urban Structure ◽

Machine Readable

This article analyses the urban structure of nineteenth-century Bristol through the analysis of property surveys. Examination of a machine-readable version of a property survey for 1837 demonstrates that Bristol exhibited modern patterns of urban development as the city's medieval form was supplanted by processes associated with the segregation of class and economic activity, a functional change from a mercantile centre to one broadly based on manufacturing and services. The longitudinal implications of this change are examined using subsequent surveys for 1851 and 1871.

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