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A good copy in full leather with titles on a paper label on the spine Joints cracking but still intact corners and spine ends worn and scuffed Paper label fading Pages age toned with scattered foxing, but generally clean No marks at all Bookstore label affixed on front pastedown Many pages unevenly cut, apparently due to poor production practice The life story of a young calculating prodigy of the early 19th century Courtesy of Wikepedia: Zerah Colburn (1804 â " 1839) was an American child prodigy of the 19th century who gained fame as a mental calculator He was thought to be intellectually disabled until the age of six However, after six weeks of schooling his father overheard him repeating his multiplication tables His father was not sure whether or not he learned the tables from his older brothers and sisters but he decided to test him further on his mathematical abilities and discovered that there was something special about his son when Zerah correctly multiplied 13 and 97 Colburn's abilities developed rapidly and he was soon able to solve such problems as the number of seconds in 2,000 years, the product of 12,225 and 1,223, or the square root of 1,449 When he was seven years old he took six seconds to give the numbers of hours in thirty-eight years, two months, and seven days Zerah is reported to have been able to solve fairly complex problems For example, the sixth Fermat number is 225+1 (or 232+1) The question is whether this number, 4,294,967,297, is prime or not Zerah calculated in his head that it was not and has divisor 641 (Its other proper divisor is 6,700,417) His father capitalized on his boy's talents by taking Zerah around the country and eventually abroad, demonstrating the boy's exceptional abilities The two left Vermont in the winter of 1810â "11 Passing through Hanover, New Hampshire, John Wheelock, then-president of Dartmouth College, offered to take upon himself the whole care and expense of his education, but his father rejected the offer At Boston, the boy's performances attracted much attention He was visited by Harvard College professors and eminent people from all professions, and the newspapers ran numerous articles concerning his powers of computation After leaving Boston, his father exhibited Zerah for money throughout the middle and part of the southern states and, in January 1812, sailed with him for England In September 1813 Colburn was being exhibited in Dublin Colburn was pitted against the eight-year-old William Rowan Hamilton in a mental arithmetic contest, with Colburn emerging the clear victor In reaction to his defeat, Hamilton dedicated less time to studying languages and more time to studying mathematics After traveling over England, Scotland, and Ireland, they spent 18 months in Paris Here Zerah was placed in the Lycà e Napolà on, but was soon removed by his father, who, at length, in 1816, returned to England in deep poverty The Earl of Bristol soon became interested in the boy, and placed him in Westminster School, where he remained until 1819 In consequence of his father's refusal to comply with certain arrangements proposed by the earl, Zerah was removed from Westminster, and his father now proposed to Zerah that he should study to become an actor Accordingly, he studied for this profession, and was for a few months under the tuition of Charles Kemble His first appearance, however, dissatisfied both his instructor and himself so much, that he was not accepted for the stage, so he accepted a position as an assistant in a school, and soon afterward commenced a school of his own To this he added the performing of some astronomical calculations for Thomas Young, then-secretary of the Board of Longitude 204 pp. Seller Inventory # AA1396
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