Edward Wheeler Scripture was born in
Mason, New Hampshire on May 21, 1864. As a child, his family lived in New York City where he later completed his undergraduate education at the College of the City of New York in 1884. He met and married May Kirk in Berlin in 1890. The couple had three children. Scripture received a
Dr. phil. from the
University of Leipzig under his advisor
Wilhelm Wundt. His graduate dissertation addressed the association of ideas. After graduation from Leipzig, Scripture and his family returned to the United States in 1891 where he was hired as faculty by
Granville Stanley Hall at
Clark University. He continued working at Clark University for one year and then took a faculty appointment at
Yale University. While at Yale, Scripture developed a timer for studying reaction times known as a pendulum chronoscope, otherwise known as a pendulum timer. On July 8, 1892, Scripture along with
Granville Stanley Hall co-founded the
American Psychological Association. In 1902, Scripture received the first grant for experimental psychology from the Carnegie Institution in order to study the sounds of human speech. He later started a neurology laboratory and the Vanderbilt Speech Clinic at the Columbia Medical Center. May Scripture filed for separation from her husband, alleging that his laboratory assistant, Ethel King, had enticed her husband into a relationship. May Scripture also sued King for $50,000. May Scripture claimed that neither her husband nor King could be located. She also asserted that her husband had sold his office furniture before absconding. After the separation, May Scripture continued to work with Edward at the clinic. Scripture traveled to London in 1919, where he began a speech clinic at West End Hospital for Nervous Diseases. In 1929, he left London for Vienna in order to accept a position in experimental phonetics at the University of Vienna. On July 31, 1945, Scripture died in
Henleaze, England at the age of 81. == Ideas ==