Walter Miles and His 1920 Grand Tour of European Physiology and Psychology Laboratories

Walter R. Miles (1885?1978) was an American experimental psychologist very much interested in laboratory apparatus and procedures and their applications to human behavior. Early in his career, Miles received an appointment as a research scientist at the Carnegie Nutrition Laboratory in Boston, Massachusetts. World War I severed many of the relationships that the Carnegie Laboratory had with research counterparts in Europe. After the war, efforts were made to reestablish these ties. From April through August of 1920, Miles visited fifty-seven laboratories and institutes in nine different countries throughout Europe, documented his journey in exquisite detail, and gathered the information into a highly detailed report of more than three hundred pages. The report, never formally published, is now available in print, and title provides unique information about the workings of major centers of physiological and psychological research in early twentieth-century Europe. The book is introduced by C. James Goodwin, a renowned Miles scholar.

During his career, Walter Miles developed his own apparatuses, such as a pursuit meter for measuring the learning and performance of tracking and an ataxiameter for quantitative studies on the effects of various dosages of alcohol on psychomotor performance. His many honors include the APA presidency in 1931-1932, the Warren Medal from the Society of Experimental Psychologists in 1949, and the Gold Medal from the American Psychological Foundation in 1962. He died on May 15, 1978, at the age of ninety-three. C. James Goodwin is a professor of experimental psychology at Western Carolina University. He specializes in spatial cognition, autobiographical memory, the history of experimental psychology, and the history of laboratory apparatus. Lizette Royer is the reference archivist at the Archives of the History of American Psychology.