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THE BOOK OF ZERAH COLBURN

EDITOR'S NOTE

Over the course of 2014 and 2015, The Net Advance of Physics planned to serialise a forgotten classic of Nineteenth Century American autobiography:

A Memoir of Zerah Colburn; Written by Himself (Containing an Account of the First Discovery of His Remarkable Powers ; His Travels in America and Residence in Europe ; A History of the Various Plans Devised for His Patronage ; His Return to This Country, and the Causes Which Led Him to His Present Profession ; with His PECULIAR METHODS OF CALCULATION) [Springfield, Mass.: Merriam, 1833]

together with some outside sources and a commentary. This still seems like a good idea; new chapters will be added as time permits. A very short modern account of Colburn's life has been recently made available by Anne van Weerden: 'Zerah Colburn, the "mental calculator"'.

Colburn was a childhood computing prodigy who once defeated young William Rowan Hamilton in a mental-arithmetic contest. His most famous achievement was calculating without paper that the sixth Fermat Number (4,294,967,297) is divisible by 641 (and therefore obviously not prime). Although Colburn was no Hamilton in later life, he was a keen observer of his world, and before dying of tuberculosis at 34 recorded the events of his career (including an attempt to learn acting from one of the Kembles and a stint as a calculator for the Board of Longitude). An under-educated child-prodigy, an American in Europe, and a person with six toes on each foot, he had, to say the least, the outsider's perspective.

CONTENTS:

• PART ONE: From The Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, and the Arts, Volume 34 (1813)
  • Some Account of ZERAH COLBURN, an American Child, who possesses some very remarkable Powers of solving Questions in Arithmetic by Computation, without Writing, or any visible Contrivance.

  • Upon certain ready Processes for Computation, supposed to have been invented by the American Boy exhibited in London, by A. H. E., with a reply by O.

  • Vindication of the Claims of the American Boy to extraordinary Talents and original Discovery, by Mr. W. Saint.

• PART TWO: A Memoir of Zerah Colburn; Written by Himself (1833)
  • Preface
  1. First Discovery of His Remarkable Powers
  2. His Travels in America
  3. His Residence in England
  4. Remarks upon the English Character
  5. His Travels in Ireland and Scotland, and His Return to London
  6. His Residence in France
  7. Manners of the French People
  8. The Earl of Bristol Proposes to Patronize Him
  9. He Comes to Leave Westminster School
  10. He Commences Actor
  11. His Further Education in England, and His Return to America
  12. His Religious Experience
  13. Causes Which Led to This Publication
  • A List of Questions Answered by Him When a Child
  • Notice of Other Calculators
  • On the Propriety of Education
  • Methods of Calculation: Extraction of Roots
  • Methods of Calculation: Finding the Factors
  • Methods of Calculation: Multiplication
  • A Few Pieces in Rhyme

• PART THREE: Appendix
  • William Rowan Hamilton remembers Colburn
  • Colburn's Final Years
  • Zerah Colburn the Younger (1832-1870)

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