The serial number is called a “file number” on the form, and probably refers to the order in which the document is filed by the registrar. The key thing to note is the dates of birth, and the date of filing.
If the number is assigned at the hospital (Kapiolani) then nothing can really explain why they would give Obama the high number and then give the twins the lower numbers.
If the number is assigned when it is filed at the registrar, then they would have to have skipped over the twins from 8-8-1961 when Obama’s was filed until 8-11-1961 when the twins were filed. The twins mom didn’t sign it until 8-7, and the doctor didn’t sign it until 8-11, so it didn’t leave the hospital until at least 2+ days after Obama’s had already been accepted by the registrar (according to his factcheck short form abstract).
The twins certificates could not have been part of the same “batch” at the registrar’s office because they were necessarily transmitted from the hospital to the registrar days after Obama’s had already been accepted.
If, however, the “batch” processing happened at Kapiolani, they would have had to pull the serial-number-stamped blanks out of order.
It would be nice to know where and when file numbers were stamped. It had to be either before the papers went to the hospital, or after they came in to the registrar. They couldn’t be stamped at the hospital, because hospitals all over the state couldn’t keep from accidentally duplicating.
Nice analysis.
I would imagine that good clerical procedure would be to fill out the certificate, stamp it with the serializer stamp, and in the last step before filing — sign and stamp it with embossing stamp.
I was thinking as well that either each hospital gets a stack of blank forms with serial numbers pre-stamped on them, or the numbers get assigned by the registrar when they are recorded. A good administrative system would pre-stamp the numbers so that any misplaced forms (gaps in the sequence) would be easily spotted.
If one wanted to register a birth that occurred outside of HI, which then was possible, one would not be likely to go to a hospital to do that but to the registrar's office or City Hall. So if the numbers are pre-stamped it would suggest that 0 was born at Kapiolani.
If the numbers are assigned by the registrar after the fact, my sense is that their process would be more concerned about assigning unique numbers but not much about getting the order of births correct. So then the number sequence would be unlikely to tell us anything.
There must be some 71-year old retirees in HI who in 1961 were junior clerks in the registrar's office and remember what their system was - how do we find them?