Book, A Key to Ray's Higher Arithmetic
date: label: date made
content: 1858
name: label: maker
content: Ray, Joseph
notes: label: Description
content: Joseph Ray was an extraordinarily popular American primary mathematics textbook author. His series was published by the Cincinnati firm of Truman & Smith when it first appeared in the 1830s; the high sales of Ray's textbooks encouraged Truman & Smith to engage William McGuffey to write readers. This partnership then dissolved in 1843, and Winthrop B. Smith formed a new firm, W. B. Smith & Co., in 1845, with Clark, Austin & Smith as his New York distributor. W. B. Smith & Co. was reorganized as Wilson, Hinkle & Co. (the publisher of this copy) when Smith retired; the house was renamed again as Van Antwerp, Bragg & Co. in 1877 before being absorbed into the American Book Company in 1890. After Ray died in 1855, Smith commissioned additional textbooks on geometry and astronomy from other professors. This book advertises eight books attributed to Ray (including Test Examples and New Elementary Algebra), three keys, and four textbooks by other authors. This work, an 1858 printing, was originally prepared during Ray's lifetime. It is a typical nineteenth-century key, listing the answers to one of the most advanced of Ray's arithmetic textbooks. The process for finding the solution is also included for most of the exercises. This copy was signed by Jacob Foster Schmeltzer (probably 1801-1881) of Manteno, Illinois, where he apparently purchased the book from the Comstock & Skinner Dry Goods Store. It is not clear whether Schmeltzer owned a copy of Higher Arithmetic as well. This copy is entirely clean. See also 1986.3060.01.
label: Description
content: Reference:
label: Description
content: John Tebbel,<I> A History of Publishing in the United States</I>, vol. 1, p. 557.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
topic: label: Subject
content: Education
label: Subject
content: Mathematics
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Mathematics
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gift of Mrs. C. B. Schmeltzer in Memory of C. B. Schmeltzer
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1986.3110.09
label: nonaccession number
content: 1986.3110
label: catalog number
content: 1986.3110.09
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Book
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: paper (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 1.5 cm x 13 cm x 19.3 cm; 19/32 in x 5 1/8 in x 7 19/32 in