LIGHTHING CALCULATIONS.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 2128, 23 October 1896, Page 4

LIGHTHING CALCULATIONS.

Unlike Herr Heinhaus, the average man does not take kindly to figures. To him multiplication is indeed vexation ; and when he meets someone who can tell him on the spur of the moment, say, that 7359 times 7359 ally impressed, and reflects regretfully how useful a similar ability would have been to himself at an earlier period of "his career. But lightning calculators, like poets, are born, not made; and the ordinary person who wants to assure himself that the fourth power of 83 is 47,458,321 had better take pen and paper and work out the problem In the ordinary way, rather than imperil his sanity by trying to emulate such prodigies. Still, one cannot help wondering how • such mental feats as those of Herr Heinhaus at the Aquarium are performed. The secret of the lightning calculator, however, has not yet been entirely revealed, and that for The very good reason that the lightning calculator apparently does not quite know it himself. Yet much has been dona in recent years towards investigating such mental processes. What has been den-?, although Imperfect and inconclusive, is enough to show both the merest and inrrportsnee of this particular department of psychology.

With but few exceptions, the great mental calculators known to fame have "been of hum'ole origin and uneducated. and have net distinguished themselves in any other sphere of activity. Thomas: filler, "tht Virginian calculator," was' a slave vht could neither read nor write, and he died as ignorant as ever at the "age of eighty. Jededrah Buxton, who "was examined by the Royal Society tr'wards the middle of last century, cotrtd find mentally in five hours the exact number of cubic eighths of an inch in a body measuring 25.145.759 yards by ?.642.72T> yards by 34.965 yards, "but could not write his own nam<\ When taken to see Girrick in "Riehsrd in." at Drury Lane, his sole criticism was to the effect that the total nurrfber of uords uttered was 12.445. the number in Garrick's part beini, registered separately. Like Pascal Ampere and Gauss, the celebrated mathematicians, showed precocity as children with regard to figures., "but their subsequent devotion t-. mathematics served to overshadow fhe : r (suabilities as calculators. Zerah Colburn. born at Vermont. U.S.A.. m 1804. does not appear to have had any particular education His autobiographical account of his performances is exceedingly bombastic and probably untrustworthy. He seems moreover, to have lost his powers at the 1 romparativ-ty parly asr? of twenty. Mangiamele. a Sicilian herdbov. who. at the age of ten. was presented by Arasro to the Academy of Sciences in Paris, and who. among oth-r extracted the cube root of 3.796.41R (equals 156) in "0 seconds, was totally illiterate Base, horn in 1524. was a noted calculator, but devoted his faculty to the romposition of tables of logarithms H J !s said to have multiplied together mentally two numbers of 100 figures Pach in hours. The problem could "no doubt have been done more rapidly by a good calculator in the ordinary "way. but the effort of nvmory demanded by Its mental solution is simply stupendous. It is noted that Dase pnepnssod r. remarkable rapidity of perception and visual memory with regard to objects reen. as, f, r *xample. in r >? >:mf«ing trv number of volumes in a library. H-nri Mondeux. who was also thp suhj. ■; ~? examination by the Academy of Seizures, was born in 1526. and wa« the son of a poor wood cutter of Tours Tn addition to feats of the usual kind bwas capable of solving questions of an Indeterminate nature. Thus, when asked to find two numbers of which the squares differ by 133. he gavp immediately GG and G7. A simpler solution being requested, he then gave, after a moment's reflection. 6 and 13. Mondeux. like other great calculators, had a very bad memory for other things, such as the names of places and persons. He •ilied in obscurity in l*t)2. George Pdda«r. the English "Calculating Boy." and civil engineer, must lie distinguished a« rlmost the only crreat mental calculator who, while retaining his abilities a? ruch. attained an eminent position in f nother walk of life. It is to French scknee that we are Indebted for the most systematic study that has yet been made of the psychology of great calculators. In 1592 the Academy of Sciences had the opportunity of mskinir an examination of two phenomenal calculatorsJacques Inaudi. an Italian, then aged twenty-five, and Pericles Diamandi, a young Greek, born at Pylaros, in lonian Isles, in 18C8. The committee ap _ pointed to conduct the examination included several mathematicians and M. Cbarert. the eminent professor at the Salpetri-r-. A report was written with regard to Inaudi. but unfortunately the committee mad- no record of their examination of Diamandi. Both subjects. however, were examined separately, and with the greatest possible minuteness by M. Alfred Binet. of the Laboratory of Physiological Psychology at the Sorbonne. The sittings, in the case of Inaudi. numbered about fifteen, and lasted for several hours e?.eh. Th- experiments clearly showed that Inaudi and Diamandi differed materially alike in -their powers and in th-dr methods.— "Westminster."