  In order to establish an objective framework for studying galaxy morphology,
we have developed a quantitative two-parameter description of galactic
structure that maps closely on to Hubble's original tuning fork. Any galaxy can
be placed in this "Hubble space", where the x-coordinate measures position
along the early-to-late sequence, while the y-coordinate measures in a
quantitative way the degree to which the galaxy is barred. The parameters
defining Hubble space are sufficiently robust to allow the formation of
Hubble's tuning fork to be mapped out to high redshifts. In the present paper,
we describe a preliminary investigation of the distribution of local galaxies
in Hubble space, based on the CCD imaging atlas of Frei et al. (1996). We find
that barred, weakly-barred, and unbarred galaxies are remarkably well-separated
on this diagnostic diagram. The spiral sequence is clearly bimodal and indeed
approximates a tuning fork: strongly-barred and unbarred spirals do not simply
constitute the extrema of a smooth unimodal distribution of bar strength, but
rather populate two parallel sequences. Strongly barred galaxies lie on a
remarkably tight sequence, strongly suggesting the presence of an underlying
unifying physical process. Rather surprisingly, weakly barred systems do not
seem to correspond to objects bridging the parameter space between unbarred and
strongly barred galaxies, but instead form an extension of the regular spiral
sequence. This relation lends support to models in which the bulges of
late-type spirals originate from secular processes driven by bars.
