1853

Abstract

T genesis of international statistics was inspired by a desire for reform. At the Great Exhibition of 1851 Adolphe Quetelet, born in Ghent in 1796, recognised that Europe was on the cusp of great economic and scientific breakthroughs. Knowledge about the changes taking place was of primary importance if the pace of reform and balance in society were to be maintained. Statistics could provide the information required, but there was no shared body of knowledge about statistics. In Europe, statisticians did not know how others in their field defined statistics or how they were conducting statistical research. So Quetelet invited everyone who was occupied with the subject to Brussels to share their ideas. The scientific congress was a relatively new form of communication that was generating a lot of enthusiasm. It was not difficult to entice the crème de la crème of European statistical practice to the Belgian capital. At midnight on Thursday 15 September 1853, Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Dieterici, director of the Prussian Statistical Office, boarded the night train in Berlin to travel to the congress that would officially begin on 19 September. Taking a train to an international congress on statistics would have been inconceivable just ten years earlier. All the signs indicated that a new Europe was in the making. Dieterici made appreciative use of the new connections and decided to stop in Dortmund, a city on the rise in the western provinces of the Kingdom of Prussia. He arrived at Dortmund station at half past five in the morning. Dieterici was impressed by the growth of the iron and coal industry, and collected material so that he could report on Dortmund to the interior minister when he returned to Berlin. The statistician was determined that the government should have up-to-date factual information in order to monitor the rapid industrialisation of the Ruhrgebiet. This was, after all, one of his office’s tasks. After touring the Dortmund area all day, on Friday evening he travelled on to Aachen, where he spent the night before continuing his journey on