>503 



ANNUAL REGISTER, 1812. 



citations of his friends, and urged 

 by the most respectable and power- 

 ful recommendations, as well as 

 by a view to his son's more com- 

 plete education, the father has 

 brought the child to this country, 

 where they arrived on the 12th of 

 May last : and the inhabitants of 

 this metropolis have for these last 

 three months had an opportunity 

 of seeing and examining this won- 

 derful phaenomenon, and of veri- 

 fying the reports that have been 

 circulated respecting him. 



Many persons of the first emi- 

 nence for their knowledge in ma- 

 thematics, and well known for 

 their philosophical inquiries, have 

 made a point of seeing and con- 

 versing with him ; and they have 

 all been struck with astonishment 

 at his extraordinary powers. It is 

 correctly true, as stated of him, 

 that — " He will not onb^ deter- 

 mine, with the greatest facility 

 and dispatch, the exact number of 

 minutes or seconds in any given 

 period of time; but will also solve 

 any other question of a similar 

 kind. He will tell the exact pro- 

 duct arising from the multiplica- 

 tion of any number, consisting of 

 two, three, or four figures, by any 

 other number consisting of the like 

 number of figures. Or, any num- 

 ber, consisting of six or seven 

 places of figures, being proposed, 

 he will determine, witli equal ex- 

 pedition and ease, all the factors 

 of which it is composed. This 

 singular faculty consequently ex- 

 tends not only to the raising of 

 powers, but also to the extraction 

 of the square and cube roots of the 

 number proposed ; and likewise to 

 the means of determining whether 

 it be a prime number (or a number 

 incapable of division by any other 



number) ; for which case there 

 does not exist, at present, any ge- 

 neral rule amongst mathemati- 

 cians." All these, and a variety 

 of other questions connected there- 

 with, are answered by this child 

 with such promptness and accu- 

 racy (and in the midst of his ju- 

 venile pursuits) as to astonish every 

 person who has visited him. 



At a meeting of his friends, 

 which was held for the purpose of 

 concerting the best methods of ' 

 promoting the views of the father, 

 this child undertook, and complete- 

 ly succeeded in, raising the number i 

 8 progressively up to the sixteenth | 

 power ! ! ! and in naming the last 

 result, viz. 281,474,970,710,656, 

 he was right in every figure. He 

 was then tried as to other num- 

 bers, consisting of one figure ; all 

 of which he raised (by actual mul- 

 tiplication and not by memory) as 

 high as the tenth power, with so 

 much facility and dispatch that the 

 person appointed to take down the 

 results, was obliged to enjoin him 

 not to be so rapid ! With respect 

 to numbers consisting of two fi- 

 gures, he would raise some of them 

 to the sixth, seventh, and eighth 

 power ; but not always with equal 

 facility : for the larger the pro- 

 ducts became, the more difficult 

 he found it to proceed. He was 

 asked the square root of 106929, 

 and before the nnmber could be 

 written down, he immediately an- 

 swered 327. He was then re- 

 quired to name the cube root of 

 2(58,336,125, and with equal faci- 

 lity and promptness he replied,645. 

 Various other questions of a simi- 

 lar nature, respecting the roots and 

 powers of very high numbers, were 

 proposed by several of the gentle- 

 men present, to all of which he 



answered 



