A Calculating Porter.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 302, 26 September 1888, Page 3

A Calculating Porter.

A marvellous mental calculator has been di&covered in the person of a railway porter at Strathpeffer, on the Highland Railway. A correspondent supplies the following facts : — ' While waiting at the railway station for the arrival of the Dingwall train, I noticed about a dozen gentlemen standing round a railway porter, watching with keen eyes the mental workings of a mind absorbed in the following arithmetical mental calculation. A gentleman had prepared and read out this question : — ' Say that in a line of a daily newspaper there were 42 letters, in each column 190 lines, in each page 7 columns, and 8 pages in each paper, how many letters for a year, taking 313 lawful days ?' In the course of a few — not more than from two to three minutes — the answer was given out — 139,873,440. This, I was told, has been since tested. I asked the figures to be divided by 25, and in a few seconds he called off the figures as 5,594,937 15-25ths. He corrected me in taking down one figure, and the extraordinary way in which his mind acts in his calculations seems unknown to himself. His lips may be seen moving when his mind is absorbed in calculation, and before he is done his forehead and neck become wet with perspiration. When delivering his answer he speaks out the figures as if he was reading from offa board. A question such as the above fatigues him, and he refuses to enter into another for an interval. He himself calls it ' practice. ' He had been threatened with the loss of eyesight, and he has practised in this way for the past fourteen years. Such a marvellous performance appears to me to be something more than mere practice — something that bespeaks an inward vision of a most peculiar kind, and which is worthy of being publicly made known.