Calculators (The)
.Alfragan, the Arabian astronomer. Died 820.
Jedediah Buxton, of Elmeton, in Derbyshire. (1705–1775.)
George Bidder and Zerah Colburn (an American), who exhibited publicly.
Inaudi exhibited “his astounding powers of calculatinʹ” at Paris in 1880, his additions and subtractions were from left to right.
“Buxton, being asked ‘How many cubical eighths-of-an-inch there are in a body whose three sides are 23,145,786 yards, 5,642,732 yards, and 54,965 yards?ʹ replied correctly without setting down a figure.”
“Colburn, being asked the square root of 106,929 and the cube root 268,336,125, replied before the audience had set the figures down.”—Price: Parallet History, vol. ii. p. 570.
