The idea of a census goes back into the mists of antiquity. It is reported that the Romans under Servius Tullius, the sixth King of Rome about the sixth century B.C., took a census every fifth year and the right of citizenship depended on the making of a complete return. The main objects of the census seem to have been the raising of men and money for further conquests. But the concept of sampling which is often thought to be of more modern origin must have been there even if dormant, for the process of taking a small quantity of material for tasting or testing in order to determine the quality of the bulk has gone on for centuries. However, the big impetus for ideas and practical applications of sampling methods seems not to have come until just after the immense strides taken around 1600 in the field of probability by such men as Cardano, Galileo and later Pascal and Fermat. There is direct evidence that Pascal's work inspired De Witt, the Dutchman who calculated the first life annuities, and no doubt others were similarly inspired.