Book, The American Tutor's Assistant. . . A Compendious System of Decimal, Practical Arithmetic
date: label: Date made
content: 1818
name: label: maker
content: McCarty & Davis
label: author
content: Jess, Zachariah
notes: label: Description
content: Zachariah Jess is believed to have lived in Wilmington, Delaware, in the mid- to late-eighteenth-century. He compiled this textbook sometime before 1802, when the third printing appeared, as well as a textbook on surveying which first appeared in 1799 and was last printed in 1814. <I>American Tutor's Assistant</I> was printed in at least 12 editions through 1819 by a variety of minor American bookselling and printing firms, including Bonsal and Niles of Wilmington, McCarty & Davis of Philadelphia, and Joseph Crukshank of Philadelphia. This copy is from the 11th edition of 1818. The textbook follows a pattern of rule, examples, and application (a word problem with the answer provided) for each topic. The topics are fairly standard for the time period and include: decimals; a multiplication table up to 12 X 12 (p. 10); short and long division using parens to separate dividend, divisor, and quotient; and conversions of currency, weights, and measures. There are approximately 15 pages on proportions and the Rule of Three, but the treatment of this subject is not as detailed as in other arithmetic textbooks. Subjects not often seen in similar textbooks include "tare and trett," allowances made by sellers to buyers (p. 88ff), and "alligation," a rule for determining the price of mixed quantities of a substance (pp. 171-175). There is a section on single-entry bookkeeping at the very end of the book. Only one word problem is given in verse (p. 179). David Herbert Donald mentioned American Tutor's Assistant in his 1995 biography, Lincoln, as one of two handbooks probably used by Abraham Lincoln's schoolteachers to teach him arithmetic (Thomas Dilworth's Schoolmaster's Assistant was the other.) This copy was signed by Joseph Leaman on January 12, 1819. It is otherwise a clean copy.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
topic: label: Subject
content: Mathematics
label: Subject
content: Education
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Mathematics
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gift of Arthur Skebeck
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1982.3001.01
label: catalog number
content: 1982.3001.01
label: nonaccession number
content: 1982.3001
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Book
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: paper (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: average spatial: 18.2 cm x 11.5 cm x 2.4 cm; 7 5/32 in x 4 17/32 in x 15/16 in