A HEAD FOR FIGURES.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 3085, 23 April 1892, Page 2 (Supplement)

A HEAD FOR FIGURES.

A "SFW calculating boy turnr-d up in f'.iii:!, ;in<l astonished ihc Ai-iilf.my of Sciences. He was .i;ked on what day of the v/cek fell 11 t!i Mil roll, ISl>2, anil instantly lvplird Monday. One concludes that this answer was correct, though that is not stated. l!ut, after all, what is the use of the caleulatin _' boy? The best we ever had made, indeed, a fortune for himself as an engineer, but made nothing else worth mentioning—no bridge, no viaduct, no anything that is associated with his name. He simply did tilings in his mind which anybody else could do with a pencil and a piece of paper. One imagines that cx-tempoi-e calculation must be a proof ot extraordinary intelligence, but like the chess player who can play 12 games without looking at a board, the marvel never grows. Zerah Colburn, at S years of age, could raise the number 8 to the oth power, which extends to 15 figures, and produce square roots and cube roots with lightning quickness. But our Cleorge Bidder surpassed him. At 12 years old he was taken before the Stock Exchange, and the following question put to him : —" If the pendulum of a clock vibrates the distance of Oγ inches in a second of time, bow many inches will it vibrate in the course of 7 years, 14 flays, 2 hours, 1 minute and 56 seconds ? Answer : 2,105.025,774.?: inches." He answered this correctly in exactly 1 minute. In later life an oven more remarkable anecdote ia told of him. His eye for numbers was as remarkable as his command of figures ; he would have been invaluable" as a military scout. A Birmingham friend once took him oveV a steel pen manufactory and inquired of the manager how many pens were in each receptacle. "There are a thousand," observed Bidder. " Well, upon my life, your friend is a good guesser," said the manager," but as a matter of fact, and for our own, there are 999 pens in the compartments." " Let us count them," said Bidder, "I think you will find exactly a thousand." Aud so they did; two of the peus had stuck together. Iu spite of some cynical statements tu the contrary, " calculating girls " have been very rare. One of them at 11 years old was, in 1819, also taken before the Stock Exchange, and found to be a marvellous arithmetician. What was very curious in her case, she could neither read nor write. It is generally believed that the animal world is incapable of calculation, but in a Seotch paper of ISIG we read an instance of something very like it. "A carrion crow, perceiving a brood of 14 chickens in a bam carried off one of them, but on a lady opening a windowdropped its prey. In the course of the day, however the plunderer returned in company with thirteen other crows, when each one seized a bird, and carried off the whole brood at once."