Hands and handles

Table 5.1 gives anthropometric data for the adult hand, gathered together from a number of sources. It may be assumed that these figures are for a population of British adults equivalent to that of the ‘standard reference population’ as described in Table 2.3. The dimensions are illustrated in Figure 5.1. Hand length and hand breadth (1 and 12) are quoted directly from Table 2.3; dimensions 2-11, 13 and 15 are quoted from Kember et al. (1981); dimensions 16, 17 and 19 are quoted from Gooderson et al. (1982); dimension 20 is quoted directly from Davies et al. (1980) for women and estimated by scaling for men, and dimension 18 is scaled down from Garret (1971).