So YEARS have rolled by as I have read and studied and struggled to understand what has become a canyon of digital dopplegangers. So far I have failed to impress any publishers or historians for that matter, with these incredible antique finds, but I have given myself a new title: The "Historytective." I have also learned how to digitally test my hunches, to eliminate as best as I can any mere dopplegangers, and isolate whatever tintypes in my collection may be significant.
Via Photoshop, I can compare my images with known photographs of my subjects, using what I call "Quintangulation," or Q-5, where I can fairly exactly superimpose 5 to 10 unchangable features of one face over another, to see if they share the same proportions. It is a significant step up from the old methods used by law enforcement for a century, and I think as reliable as computer facial recognition. If my subjects line up with these five or more points, then I call them a match and an historically important discovery.
The features of the human face which are decided by skull structure change very little, such as the distance between the irises of the eyes and from them to the eyebrows, or especially the distance between the nostrils and those irises, or the placement of the cheek bones in relation to these six "points"... and if the subject is fairly young, the bottom of the chin is also related to those other points. A close match of all of these proportions is highly unlikely, and certainly qualifies as a doppleganger. If the ears are the same shape... we have a winner. All of these mathematical relationships are only explored if the face in question is already a match as far as the correct time period, vintage clothing, and captured by the appropriate photographic technology. As best as can be deduced from black and white photography, hair and eye color are studied... although they can be misleading.
So far I have identified several hundred tintype images, many of which pass my Q-5 test. And amoung them are these... "Triple Headers," which, when multiplied into the odds against finding such a doppleganger, defy the greatest skeptic. To find an image which has three persons who look very much like three famous persons right out of history... the proper ages and body type, who happened to have had some relation to one another, and each of which can be verified through my "quintangulation," process, is exciting and I believe quite important to American History.
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