...CALCULATING THE TRUE HEIGHT OF THE SOMERTON MAN...

Those familiar with the Somerton Man case will know that his body was measured on the day it was discovered and it was found that he had a height of 5 feet 11 inches.

In this post, the same technique used to calculate Charlie’s height has been applied to the body of the Somerton Man to verify his height based on the photograph you can see above. The photograph shown is from the 1949 inquest, I have added the information on the photograph for those who would like the detail.

HEIGHT CALCULATIONS 

(based on the Researchgate document)

In the image to the right above, I have added a ruler set to measure the height of the man's head.  In this scaled-down image, you can see that the ruler indicates the man's head measures 7 cm from top to chin. By multiplying the head height by 8,  we arrive at the scaled-down full height of the man 70 X 8 = 560mm

The man's head should measure 1/8th of his full height thus to arrive at the man's actual full height we divide the 5 feet 11 inches (1803.4 mm) known height by 8 giving us a head height of 225.45 mm. which by default gives us our full height of 1803.4 mm (5 feet 11 inches)

To calculate the scale for this image we simply divide the actual full height by the scaled-down photograph height as follows:

1803.4 divided by 560 = 3.22 our scale for this image is therefore 1:3.22

This exercise had two purposes, firstly to verify the height of the Somerton Man and secondly, to prove the validity of the Researchgate technique. Both objectives have been met.

Background

The previous post covered the technique with which we could accurately calculate the height of Carl ‘Charlie Webb. This exercise aimed to prove or disprove the claim made by Professor Abbot that the man named ‘Charlie’ in the 'family group of 4' photograph was the ‘Somerton Man’.  The technique relied upon the known height of Roy Webb, Charlie’s brother, obtained from his military service records clearly showed, both written and in a photograph taken at the time that Roy had a height of 5 feet 8 inches. Subsequently, and based on Roy’s height we calculated Charlie’s height which was also put at 5 feet 8 inches +/- 1 inch. That result disproved Professor Abbot’s claim regarding Charlie as the Somerton Man’s height is known to have been 5 feet 11 inches, approximately 3 inches taller than the man Charlie shown in the family group photograph.