The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1888-10-24
Sn General.
Zerah COlburn.

rThe following story of Zerah Col
burn by Dr. Oswald, in The Open Court,
may seem incredible to the young and
middle-aged readers of the WATCHMAN,
but there are many people in Washing
ton county Ga few even in Montpelier)
who can vouch for the truth of it. If
the article does any injustice TO Col
burns memory, it is by way of omis-
sion, not of commission. The salient
points of his life are these:-Ile was
born in Cabot, in this county, on the
LIST day of September, 1904, and died
March 2, 1910. His parents were in
no way superior to their neighbors.
They were simply the common people.
He was a green, awkward boy. Our
grandmothers of to-day were then
young girls, and it is highly probable
that the young girls of that day diff
fered in no essential respect from the
girls of the period. AT any rate, they
looked down with contempt upon
their freckle-faced schoolmate. If they
regarded him as their equal, it was only
in the way of scholarship. "Scholar-
ship" they called it; but it was moth
ing of the kind. He was merely
ir1ak-a sport-of Nature. All that is
related of him below, mind you, &C.
Cured before he was ten years of age.
In course of time-and it was, no
doubt, long time, for the telegraph
had not been invented and newspapers
were not as ubiquitous as they are
now - his wonderful gifts became
known to some Snowman, the forerun-
ner of Barnum, and he was exhibited
all over Europe before the quality, the
nobility, and even the royalty. Upon
his return to America he entered upon
the Methodist itineracy and preached,
with small measure of success. in MANY
towns of Vermont. He gradually lost
those powers which had made him ia
nous, and at last he had not enough of
mental activity to solve the problem,
"Two and two make how many?" In
his way, he was as wonderful as Shak-
speare; yet of him all that can be said
is what may be said of most of us,
" He lived; he died. "-EDIToR.
How far intuitions may surpass the
usual results of education is strikingly
illustrated by the case of the American
peasant boy, Zerah Colburn, who at
the early age of eight years began to
surprise the arithmeticians of his native
village by his feats in the solution of
numerical problems. He would repeat
the products of five or six different
numbers, extract square and cube roots
when they wanted him to dig potatoes,
or estimate the number of cubic inches
of water in the basin of every wayside
pond. His monomania at last attracted
the attention of outsiders: and in 1872,
before the completion of his ninth year,
he was taken to London, where the
mathematician Baily (who at first had
doubted the truth of the phenomenal
reports) examined him in the presence
of several equally skeptical colleagues,
with the following results: " He raised
any number consisting of one figure
progressively to the tenth power, giving
the results (by actual multiplication
and not by memory faster than they
could be set down in figures by the
person appointed to record them. He
raised the number eight successfully to
the sixteenth power; and in naming the
last result, which consisted Of fifteen
figures, he was right in every one. On
being asked the square root of l06, 500
he answered 1927 before the original num-
Der could be ,critten dotcn He was ther
required to find the cube root of 26S,
1886, 1875, and with equal facility ant
promptness he replied 645. He was
asked how many minutes there are IL
forty-eight years; and, before thu
question could be written down, he re
piled % ,22S 500, and Immediately after
ward gave the correct number of sec
onds. On being requested to give
the factors which would produce tn,
number of 247 ,4S3, he immediatel,
named 9ll and 2G3, which are are III
OnIu t,cO numbers from the multiplied
ton of which it would result. On III 30
being proposed, he named i,27'
and So X 2,065. He was then asked [,
give the factors of 3G,0S3, but imme
diately replied that it had none, whicl
is really the case, this being a prim
number. The number 1924 ,967 %
having been given to him, he discov
cred Gas Euler had previously done
that it is not the prime number whicl
Fermat had supposed it to be, but tina
it is the product of the factors 6 700
All GIL. On being asked to name tn
square of 800 ,999, he obtained tn
amazing result (999, 99S, 000,00D b
twice multiplying the square of 81 ,03
by 81. He then of his own accord mul
tiplied that product by 49, and said tina
the result (namely, 4S,999, 1902 900, 049
was equal to the square of 1880 ,95l
In the extraction of roots and in tn
discovery of factors of large numbers
he Immediately, or in very few sec
onds, gave answers, which, accordin
to the ordinary methods, would hav
required very difficult and laboriou
calculation (even with the aid of logs
rithms), while prime numbers cannot b
recognized as such by any known rule.
1t is significant circumstance that
prodigy of that special type was evolve
in land of commercial activity an
mental arithmeticians, just as the infar
virtuoso Mozart was born in land c
music, and the poet Goethe in the HON
! of the Minnesingers.
g BRACE UP.-You are feeling dc
J. nroesod your annetite ia moor Won M