Tazewell Republican. [volume] (Tazewell, Va.) 1892-1919, 1905-07-06
WIZARDS in FIGURES
MARVELLOUS PERFORMANCES OF
MATHEMATICAL GENIUsEs.
Men Of Extraordinary Ability in Mem
tai Arithmetic Who Created
Great Sensations In
Their Day.

1nelr LAY.
Figure wizards, lightning caIeula.
tors or whatever you may call these
marvellous mental calculators. belong
to no time or country. They seem to
be geniuses who are born once In a
generation. They have always at
tracted attention In these modern
days-on the playhouse stage, usually.
One ofthe most remarkable Of them
all, says the Philadelphia North Amer
lean, was Jedediah Buxton. who -four
fshed In the eighteenth century, and
with whom reckoning was positively
disease, for he could not go to
church without calculating exactly
how many words there were In the
sermon that he heard nor to the the
alter but he must count how many
words were uttered by each perform
er. He would stride over a field two
or three times In different directions
and then reckon mentally how many
square inches Of land there were In 1t.
: With the object of testing him, some
skeptics asked him how May cubical
eighths OF an inch there are In a
quadrangular mass measuring 23,145,.
7S9 yards long, 6,642,732 yards wide
and 54,965 yards thick, and after a
very brief mental calculation he gave
an accurate answer. At last he made
himself as he said, drunk with
reckoning" imposing upon himself the
task Of discovering how many grains
OF eight different kinds of corn and
pulse there were In 200,000,000 cubic
miles, and how many hairs one inch
long! For the solution Of this prob.
lem he, first OF all, actually counted
how many grains of each kind there
were In an inch cube and how many
hairs Of the specified inch length, and
then he made the remainder OF the
calculation as usual, mentally.
George Parker Bidder, who about
half century ago was an eminent
English civil engineer. had q won
derful reputation for his system OF
mental calculation, When he was
little boy only six years old he used
to amuse himself by counting up to
to hundred, then to a thousand and
next to a million, and by this means
he unconsctOusly trained himself to
contemplate the relations of high
numbers. Then he would build up
marbles, shot and peas into pyramids
and be able to tell exactly without
counting how many went to the con.
struction of each.
When he went to school he did all
his mathematical sums mentally,
without any slate reckoning, In one
tenth the time that the other boys oc.
cupied. and then, when at last he
went out into the professional world
and became famous as an engineer,
1t was his business sometimes to APP
pear before parliamentary committees
that we're sitting on contested rail-
way bills, and on such occasions he
would prove by a mental calculation
that the figures Of counsel were wrong
within a few seconds Of their utter.
ance.
In nearly every case these figure
wizards have shown their remarkable
talents as little children and without
any special advantages In the way
Of parentage or training-usually the
reverse. Thus, In 1889, little Sicil-
ian named Vito Mangiamele, II years
old, son of a shepherd, astonished the
members Of the Academy Of Sciences
at Paris, before whom he appeared,
by the wonderful speed and accuracy
of his mental reckonings. In half a
minute he calculated for them the
CUBIC root of 3.796,410. and in three
minutes he extracted the tenth root
of 2S2, 1920.
Then he waF asked the question:
what number has the following pro-
portions, that If its cube is added to
five times its square, and then AZ
times the number and the number 40
be subtraeted from the result the res
maindeF Is equal to O or xeroI" The
question was repeated to him sec.
ond time, so that he might properly
understand IL. but while his interro-
gator was repeating the last word the
boy replied: 1.-THE number is Ave-"
Nearly 100 years ago also young
American boy named Zera 6olburn
created a sensation In London. He
was only eight years old at the time
and did not know q single one OF the
ordinary rules Of simple arithmetic.
Yet In a few seconds he answered cor
rectly such questions as theses
"What is the square root Of 106,s2sf
What is the cube rect Of s6s,Saa, 1882
How many seconds are there In 4S
years. When eight is raised to the
sixteenth power what Is the result?"
He always gave the correct answers,
but he could never explain how he
came by them. M