Brewer's: Calculators

(The Jedediah Buxton, of Elmeton, in Derbyshire. (1705-1775.) George Bidder and Zerah Colburn (an American), who exhibited publicly.

Inaudi exhibited “his astounding powers of calculatin' ” 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?' 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: Parallel History, vol. ii. p. 570.

Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
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