CH. XIII] CALCULATING PRODIGIES 271 



In 1814 he was taken to Paris, but amid the political turmoil 

 of the time his exhibitions fell flat. His English and American 

 friends however raised money for his education, and he was 

 sent in succession to the Lycee Napoleon in Paris and West- 

 minster School in London. With education his calculating 

 powers fell off, and he lost the frankness which when a boy had 

 charmed observers. His subsequent career was diversified and 

 not altogether successful. He commenced with the stage, then 

 tried schoolmastering, then became an itinerant preacher in 

 America, and finally a " professor " of languages. He wrote his 

 own biography which contains an account of the methods he 

 used. He died in 1840. 



Contemporary with Colburn we find another instance of a 

 self-taught boy, George Parker Bidder, who possessed quite 

 exceptional powers of this kind. He is perhaps the most 

 interesting of these prodigies because he subsequently received 

 a liberal education, retained his calculating powers, and in later 

 life analyzed and explained the methods he had invented and 

 used. 



Bidder was born in 1806 at More ton Hampstead, Devon- 

 shire, where his father was a stone-mason. At the age of six he 

 was taught to count up to 100, but though sent to the village 

 school learnt little there, and at the beginning of his career was 

 ignorant of the meaning of arithmetical terms and of numerical 

 symbols. Equipped solely with this knowledge of counting 

 he taught himself the results of addition, subtraction, and 

 multiplication of numbers (less than 100) by arranging and re- 

 arranging marbles, buttons, and shot in patterns. In after-life 

 he attached great importance to such concrete representations, 

 and believed that his arithmetical powers were strengthened 

 by the fact that at that time he knew nothing about the 

 symbols for numbers. When seven years old he heard a dispute 

 between two of his neighbours about the price of something 

 which was being sold by the pound, and to their astonishment 

 remarked that they were both wrong, mentioning the correct 

 price. After this exhibition the villagers delighted in trying to 

 pose him with arithmetical problems, 



