| Abstrakt: |
Recent Scholarship on racial science has traced how concepts, materials, instruments, and infrastructures were utilized to improve understanding of race and human heredity. I will trace the circulation of the color-top of the Milton Bradley Company in the late 19th and the early 20th century. Color-top was initially developed by naturalists and merchants in order to measure color quantitatively, and it played a key role in the development of colorimetry. The color-top was used in American racial science as an instrument to measure human skin color. I will firstly focus on the life of Milton Bradley, the color-top seller. He made toys in order to support newly emerging kindergarten education. Citing color theories of physics, and communicating with naturalists, he built on a quantitative color system. Second, looking at anthropological guidebooks and the practice of racial scientists, I will describe the adoption of Bradley's color-top by British and American racial scientists. They pursued the standardization of methodology and put effort into upgrading the color-top. In conclusion, I will show the following: color-top was not just a tool for justifying racism, but it linked racial science with socio-economic context; the color-top evolved from a toy to scientific object of racial science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
