Encyclopedia of Biometrics

“Biometrics” used to be a broad term for the scientific measurement of activity. The current Collins English Dictionary still defines it as: “1. The study of biological data by means of statistical analysis. 2. The statistical calculation of the probable duration of human life”. When I first joined the staff of the Institute of Psychiatry, in those prelapsarian days when the numerous external doors to the building were unlocked and unsupervised all day, with just a porter in a glass box near the main entrance to advise visitors, and nobody had a swipe card, the institute had a “Biometrics Unit”...