CLPEX Chat Board

antonroland wrote: Slightly O/T but relevant methinks...who was REALLY first to reach the summit of Everest? The great explorer, Sir Edmund Hillary or the lowly guide, Tensing Norkay?

I suppose that's why it's hard to sort out in retrospect. People worry so much about "firsts." And, so often, it's nothing more than who had something named for them, happened to write the first paper, or as on Everest, just happened to be taking one's turn in the lead when the next ridge turned out to be the peak. And it does take some work to try to warm up to a lot of Victorian figures. When you combine the general neurotic rigidity, the lack of the sort of automatic time-marking that today tends to settle issues of precedence, the first existence of a science-aware, significant, and competitive press to air controversy, and the feeling that scientific discovery was now terribly important to the common man who would eventually benefit in practical ways, you get an environment just made for wrangling.

It might be interesting to compile a list of named places, processes, and things named not for the person who discovered them but for whoever brought them to attention. Very often, the person whose name attached never claimed credit or even disavowed credit but was stuck it.

Antonroland makes mention of Mahem Chandra Bose working under Henry in India. I have a small book called Finger Print Companion: A Practical Handbook by Hem Chandra Bose, published in Calcutta in 1927.

Does anyone know if he might be related to Mahem Chandra Bose? Or is Hem a shortening of Mahem?

Kathy

I find almost all references to Henry's collaborator as Hem Chandra Bose. It is cited in a paper by an Indian writer as Rai Bahadur Hem Chandra Bose, Rai Bahadur being a high honorific, likely awarded by the British Raj.(Azizul Haque had Khan Bahadur appended on the front of his name. The subtleties of Indian titles is a bit hard to follow sometimes, but bahadurs are apparently rated one above what precedes them in this kind of usage.) I suspect "Mahem" was a typo somewhere.

I have read so many versions of these guys' names in different publications, those were the versions of their names that sort of stuck in my mind as probably the most correct but thanks for that Gerald.

Thanks, Gerald, for the clarification. It fits very well as the title page of the book shows the words Rai and Bahadur in a smaller font around the name, thus: Rai Hem Chandra Bose Bahadur.

So, I have a book published by one of the folks who worked under Henry. Wonder what it's worth? The price on the front cover is 5 rupees. I hope it is worth more than that now.

Kathy

Can't say. Certainly doesn't turn up on a search, as far as finding a copy, or the earlier "Hints on Finger Prints" that you see reprinted within the Companion. I don't know if that's different from his 1917 "Hints on Finger-Prints with a Telegraphic Code for Finger Impressions," which sounds like Hints on Fingerprints with the code part added as a Part II. The publisher told the British government it sold well, but I don't know what that means in numbers. Since even on a general Internet search it comes up with only twice, in an Indian paper on the two men working with Henry and in a list of books known but not possessed. It appears in Google Books, largely because of the mention in the Indian article, but no facsimile of it, as there is for several other early fingerprint works.