St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1893-09-03
CALCULATIONS.
Notable Instances OF Abn ormaI
mathematical Power.

Notable Instances OF Abn ormaI
mathematical Power.
Among the many extraordinary cal
culatorS boy named Vito Mangiamele,
a Sicilian, the son of a shepherd. who
century, says the Boston Herald. July
8, 1889, some OF the eminent members of
the Academy of Sciences at Paris. In
Guiding NM. AragO, Lacroix and
Sturm, met to examine this remarkable
boy, whose powers of mental calcula-
ton were deemed quite ineXplcable.
The examiners asked him several ques-
tons which they knew under ordinary
circumstances to be tedious of solution,
such as the cubic root of 1886, 416 and
the tenth root of 2S2, 475.2S9. The
first of these he answered in half min
ute, the second in three minutes
One question was of the following
complicated charaterer: What number
has the following proportion, that if its
cube is added to five times its square,
and then forty-two times the number
and the number 10 to be substracted
from the recult, the remainder is equal
to 0, or Zero? NJ. Arago repeated this
question second time, but while he
was finishing the last word the boy re-
year Master BaSSie, who was only thir-
teen years OF age, went through an ex-
traordinary mnemonic performance at
Willis rooms, London.
Five large sheets Of paper, closely
printed with tables and dates, specific
GRANTEES, velocities, planetary distances,
etc, were distributed among the visitors,
and every one was allowed to ask
Master Bassie question relating to
these tables, to which was received
correct answer. He would also name
the day of the week on which any day
of the month had fallen in any partic.
uiar year.
He could repeat long series of num-
bers backward ana forward, and point
out the place of any number in the
series, and to prove that his power were
not merely confined to the rows of num-
bers in the printed tables he allowed
the whole company to form long series
by contributing each two or three dIgits
i'll the order in which they sat: and
then, after studying this series for
few minutes, he committed it to memory
and repeated it entire, both backward
and forward, from beginning to end.
These performances are believed to
have been not the result of any natural
meteOric power, but of a method to be
dCquiItu ut dllg pStSOH III tue course OF
twelve lessons.
Zerah COlburn, who excited much IN
terest in London in 1912, was native
of Vermont. At six years old he sud-
denly showed extraordinary power OF
mental calculation. By processes which
seemed to be almost UNCONSCIOUS to him.
self he answered arithmetIcal questions
of considerable difficulty.
When eight years old he was brought
to London, where he astoniShed many
learned audiences and spectators by
given correct solutions to such problems
as the following: Raise eight up to the
sixteenth power: give the square root
of &c., 24, the cubic root of EOS, $50, 125;
how many seconds are there in forty
eight years? The answers were AWAY
given in few minutes sometimes in a
few seconds.
He was ignorant of the ordinary rules
of arithmetic and did not know how or
why particular modes of process came
into his mind. On one occasion the
Duke of Gloucester asked him TO
multiply 1874 by 543. Something in
the boys manner induced the Duke to
ask how he did it, from which it APP
peard that the boy arrived at the result
by multiplying 65. POP by 1871, an equlva-
lent process, but why he made this
change in the fraction neither he nor
anybody else could tell.