This is an excerpt from a post I made on the Big Footy Forum in March of this year:
An update on the matter of Ratios and the height of Roy and Carl Webb. In the last day I had reason to dig a little deeper and the first article found that supported the 1:8 ratio of head to full height was this one:
THE 5 YEAR SCIENTIFIC STUDY
Not satisfied with that, I dug deeper and found a 5-year scientific study that 3D body scanned 63,375 males between the ages of 19 to 21 and 1375 females in the same age group.The study was undertaken in the USA at a Texas USAF base, the focus was the height of new recruits. The study found that the ratio of head height to full height was 1:8. Full marks to the artists!
Interestingly one of the purposes of the study was to test the Vitruvian Man or 'Golden Ratio' proposed by da Vinci and it found that in fact, da Vinci was 10% out.
The bottom line is that according to this find and confirmation of the 1:8 ratio, then Carl Webb cannot be the Somerton Man, he is 3 inches shorter than the Somerton Man's 5 feet 11 inches which was recorded by Police on the day his body was found on Somerton beach.
Here's the link to the Scientific study for those interested:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7284298/
The information in this post and the images took some time to gather and organize. I post them here today in the interests of truth and honesty so that the audience out there can get a realistic understanding of the important issue of just how tall was Carl Webb and the noticeable and substantiated difference in his height when compared to the height of the Somerton Man.
That is an extremely useful example of research. I acknowledge that you do include known heights for Roy Webb and the Somerton Man and you have taken all the steps to substantiate your statement which is at it should be. I would leave a small % chance that the measurement of the Somerton Man may have been out although that does seem unlikely given the evidence that exists.
ReplyDeleteOk, I got it. Firstly you have Roy’s known height from his enlistment photograph. Next using the 1:8 ratio you can find the height of his head which would be 68 inches divided by 8 which equals 8.5 inches. Now I take that and transfer it over to the family photograph, measure Roy’s head on the photograph and it equals 52mm which then translates to 8.5 inches. Easy as ! I guess you could calculate the father’s height in the same way or would it be different?
ReplyDeleteNot quite as simple for the father’s height. If you look at Roy’s position in relation to Carl’s you can see they’re very close to standing on the same plane but the father is on a different plane as is the mother. I would say he’s definitely shorter of course but just how much is difficult to estimate. The physical measurement of 48 mm by itself suggests he would be about 7% shorter or 4.76 inches shorter than Roy and Carl or about 5 feet 3 inches tall but it’s a guesstimate only. Notice that the father appears to be standing closer to the camera and that would make a significant difference, so he could be even shorter.
ReplyDeleteVictorian Prison records have a Richard A Webb, # 26477 at 5 Ft 8 Inches tall. That puts him as the same height as Roy and Carl although he looks shorter, all down to the camera angles Atticus and the distance from the lens to the subject. Makes no difference to Carl and Roy's height estimation I don't think, on the face of it, Roy and Carl are the same height but dad is shorter and we know that Roy was 5 feet 8 inches tall. Go figure!
ReplyDeleteWhat was he in prison for ?
DeleteThe offence was ‘break and enter with intent’
ReplyDeleteThe url for the record is:
ReplyDeletehttps://prov.vic.gov.au/archive/1C9D15A5-F3A9-11E9-AE98-1DAE2E178D55?image=187
and select Page 183 from the option on the left of the page.
Thought he had a certain look about him
Delete28 years old, not a youngster
12 months hard labour
Copped another month on 7/6/1894
Not exactly squeaky clean are they
For those interested, I did an exercise with the length of the collar on Carl's shirt. Using the collar length as a known dimension of 140 mm it came out when extended that Carl was a shade over 5 feet 8 inches in height. The collar length was a best estimate, it is difficult to see exactly where it finished and while the shirt looks the same as Roy's it could have been slightly different. Overall I agree with Atticus that there is a need for caution with gauging heights on photographs. The other exercise I did with Cleland and his suitcase worked out to be very close to true.
ReplyDeleteI'll have a crack at that collar length example. Measure the collar length, add a bit because of the bump in it, that gives me a known length and then apply that to the height of Carl's face on the photograph. and then extend that by multiplying it by eight to get Carl's full height. Is that the way it's done?
ReplyDeleteThat's about it. Just print the family pic out at a reasonable size first and let it dry for a few minutes. Then measure the collar on Carl's shirt, let's say its 42 mm. Then that 42 mm on the print equals the 140mm full length of the collar. Then measure the height of Carls head do the conversion and multiply it by 8 to get Carl's full actual height. But use your actual measurements no the ones I have quoted here.
DeleteAnonymous, They would have been tough times no doubt, that kind of offence today might get a slap on the wrist. In my days in the job it was a probation thing for a first offence, 3 months if a subsequent and longer if it was habitual offender. Hard labour might have been sewing mail bags :)
ReplyDeleteOK, got it worked out, I got Carl to be 5 feet 8 and a half inches and the collar length was closer to 6 inches which seems to be pretty logical.
ReplyDeleteA short math tutorial that explains ratio as it applies to the calculation of Roy and Carl’s overall height,
ReplyDeleteStep 1. Courtesy of Roy’s military record we have his known height which in CMs = 175.26
Step 2. To calculate Roy’s head height, we divide his overall height by 8 which = 21.9 cms
Step 3. We need to get the ratio or scale of Roy’s actual head height to the measured height of his head on the photograph. To do that we divide the actual height by the photo height = 219 divided by 52 = 4.21
Step 4. Now we can calculate his full height by first multiplying his photo head height of 52 mm by the scale of 4.21 = 219 . To calculate his full height we multiply his head height of 219 mm by 8 = 1751mm.or approximately 5 feet 9 inches.
I rounded off the dimensions in this process, in an earlier example the actual height was closer to 5 feet 8 inches. Anyone can make little mistakes as one person did on another blog the way they should handle that is not to blame others for it.
You know, the thing about the guy said to be Charlie is that he looks like a teenager
ReplyDeleteRoy looks like he's mid 20's but Charlie who is a year younger looks and behaves like a teen
I don't think that's Charlie at all, but who could it be
Can you get hold of the family photo album
and check those family group photos
and check what else is in it
and if they won't show you, what's to hide?
Sadly the family album seems to be a no go zone. There are no other photographs of Charlie at least in the public sphere. Telling someone's age from a photograph is very difficult to do in a forensic manner, we can make educated guesses but that isn't good enough if you are looking for solid evidence. The evidence we have shows that the person supposedly identified as Charlie in the family of 4 photograph is at least 2.5 inches if not 3 inches shorter than the Somerton Man. In my view there is zero evidence to support that Charles Webb was the Somerton Man and that includes the much publicised DNA information for which no report has been made public. The fact that there is no mention of where or when the single rootless shaft of hair that was used for the DNA analysis was taken just adds to the evidence that Charles Webb was not the Somerton Man.
DeleteThanks for your comment.
This post clearly demonstrates the accuracy of the 1:8 rule. This rule states that a person’s head is an eighth the height of that person’s full height. and it is supported by the USAF survey information as shown in the main post.
ReplyDeleteIn the case of the Somerton Man, we know from Police information that the man found on Somerton beach and on whom an autopsy was carried out by Dr Dwyer, known as the Somerton Man was 5 feet 11 inches tall. In millimeters that equals 1803.4 mm. The rule of 8 as you will read in this comment, substantiates that statement
Because we have the man's known height information we can calculate whether it was true by virtue of the fact that we have a Police photograph of the profile of the man.
Here are the calculations:
You will see from the post that the height of the man’s head is 70 mm. Using the rule of 8, we multiply the height of his head, 70mm, by 8. That gives us 560mm which equals the photographic full height of the man.
Now we need to establish the physical full height of the man we do this by dividing the known physical full height of 1803.4 mm by the photographic height of 560mm which gives us a scale or ratio. The result of that calculation is a scale factor of 3.22 expressed as 1:3.22.
The final leg of the calculation now becomes the photographic head height of 70mm multiplied by 3.22 which equals 225.4 mm and that gives us the physical height of his head which is 225.4 mm. To get his full height we multiply the physical head height of 225.4 mm by 8 which gives us 1803.2 mm.
That proves the accuracy of this rule of 8 to within .2 mm.
The man photographed in the image above was 5 feet 11 inches tall within a tolerance of .2mm. This is an undeniable fact.
Using exactly the same process we have proven that Carl Webb was 5 feet 8 inches tall and therefore he cannot be the Somerton Man who, we have proven, was 5 feet 11 inches tall.
Except that the photo of Carl Webb is Charles Richard Webb according to Pelling and I agree
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment, you sound very confident so I am interested to know what the evidence is that supports your view?
DeleteIt seems that we agree on one thing and that is whoever it is in the photograph it's not the Somerton Man.
Looking forward to your reply.
There's a general consensus that the person in the top right corner of the family group photo is the nephew Charles Richard Webb and the person next to him is his uncle Carl Webb. That being so, Carl Webb isn't 5'11" he doesn't look like the person in the morgue and therefore Carl Webb isn't Somerton man. Webb's and DA won't like having the rug pulled out from under them but that's the way it is.
ReplyDeleteI am not certain about just who that is, I don't disagree with you, just that we don't have any hard evidence. I take it you are talking about the large group of family and friends image so I will put a copy on this page. You will have noted that Roy and Carl in the small group are wearing the same style of shirt and so it appears is the person that you're referring to. I agree that there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth :)
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ReplyDeleteThey has to be records of Carl Webb lurking in the archives somewhere! I’m sure he had a passport or driving license or any other kind of ID, and the height discrepancy is really big,three inches is alot, if only we had other pictures of Carl, we can compare them!
ReplyDelete