Penfield Mk IV · From the keeper’s handbook

The forty-eight registers

Six families of eight, read clockwise from the top of the dial. Each may be set at five degrees. The descriptions are those printed in the keeper’s handbook, which has been revised with every mark since 1979; the Mk IV’s handbook is its eleventh edition.

Keeper’s handbook, eleventh edition: the registers and the confirmation key (PDF, 4 pages)

I. Ease

For rest without sleep.

Registers of the Ease family
Register	Name	From the handbook
I.1	Repose	Rest with the eyes open. The register most keepers choose first.
I.2	Unhurried	Time seems to pass at the speed one would like. Recommended for long meals.
I.3	Contentment	Satisfaction with things as they are, without the wish to change them.
I.4	Lightness	A loosening of the shoulders and the forehead. Pairs well with music.
I.5	Reverie	The mind is allowed to wander and comes back by itself.
I.6	Fondness for the present	The feeling of a good afternoon that one does not want to end.
I.7	Drowse	The edge of sleep, held there. Not for use in a bath.
I.8	Stillness	The body at rest and the attention at rest with it.

II. Attention

For work, study and the reading of long books.

Registers of the Attention family
Register	Name	From the handbook
II.1	Application	The steadiness to begin a task and continue it.
II.2	Clarity	Thoughts arrive one at a time and in order.
II.3	Alertness	Quick attention to what is happening now. Useful before a meeting.
II.4	Absorption	Deep attention to a single activity, with less awareness of time.
II.5	Curiosity	Interest in what one does not yet know.
II.6	Patience	Tolerance of delay, repetition and other people’s explanations.
II.7	Vigilance	Sustained watchfulness over a long period. For night work.
II.8	Concentration on a single object	For tasks that require one thing and nothing else. Not recommended for driving, which requires several.

III. Warmth

For company, and for letters to people one has neglected.

Registers of the Warmth family
Register	Name	From the handbook
III.1	Fondness	Warm regard for the people one is with.
III.2	Gratitude	Awareness of what one has been given, and by whom.
III.3	Tenderness	Gentleness toward someone vulnerable: a child, an invalid, an old dog.
III.4	Conviviality	The pleasure of company. For dinners.
III.5	Hospitality	The wish to make a guest comfortable.
III.6	Forgiveness	Toward others. The house has not been able to make a register for forgiving oneself.
III.7	Nostalgia, fond	The past remembered kindly.
III.8	Devotion	Steady loyalty to a person, a cause or a piece of work.

IV. Vigor

For mornings, and for difficult telephone calls.

Registers of the Vigor family
Register	Name	From the handbook
IV.1	Appetite	Hunger, for food or for anything else. Often used by keepers recovering from illness.
IV.2	Resolve	The firmness to do something one has decided to do.
IV.3	Ambition	The wish to do something larger than one has done before.
IV.4	Courage	Willingness to face something one fears. For difficult telephone calls.
IV.5	Mischief	Mild. Keepers with children are asked to keep the key to the family room.
IV.6	Exuberance	High spirits that want to be shared.
IV.7	Elation	Joy at its fullest. Recommended at the second degree; the fifth is tiring.
IV.8	Zeal	Energy given entirely to one end. Not recommended in the evening.

V. Gravity

For grief, reflection and the reckoning of one’s own conduct. Registers 5 to 8 lie below the wellbeing threshold.

Registers of the Gravity family
Register	Name	From the handbook
V.1	Wistfulness	A gentle ache for something absent. The most used register in the Gravity family.
V.2	Solemnity	The seriousness proper to an occasion: a funeral, a vow, a verdict.
V.3	Contrition	Sorrow for a fault, with the wish to make amends.
V.4	Elegy	For remembering the dead with ceremony.
V.5	Mourning	Below the threshold. For grief that has not yet been allowed to arrive.
V.6	Remorse	Below the threshold. For the honest reckoning of a wrong one has done.
V.7	Despondency	Below the threshold. Included at the request of physicians, for the study of mood, and very rarely chosen.
V.8	Self-accusatory depression	Below the threshold. The heaviest register. Named in 1993, unchanged since, and the subject of the Registry’s audit.

VI. Rest

For sleep and for coming back from it.

Registers of the Rest family
Register	Name	From the handbook
VI.1	Settling	The transition from the day toward sleep.
VI.2	Light sleep	Sleep from which one wakes easily. For keepers who must listen for a child.
VI.3	Deep sleep	Sleep from which one does not wake easily. Set an alarm.
VI.4	Dreamless	Sleep without dreams. Chosen most often in the weeks after a bereavement.
VI.5	Waking	The return from sleep, unhurried and complete.
VI.6	Recovery	The register to which the instrument returns a keeper after any Gravity setting. Since 4 July 2026, the register to which firmware 4.2.1 returns anyone in V.5 to V.8.
VI.7	Quiet	An absence of feeling in particular, for rest between registers.
VI.8	Null	No register. The instrument withdraws, and the keeper is left as they were.