Lindsay Dirkx Brown Art Gallery Presents, Rhythm of Life
Kabir A. Adejare, Patricia A. Montgomery, and Karin Turner
Thomas Fuller
The image as imagined by Kabir Adejare
Will be at, The Art of Living black 2011
TAOLB 2011
THOMAS FULLER, THE MATHEMATICIAN
Thomas Fuller, familiarly known as the Virginia Calculator, was a native of Africa. At the age of fourteen he was stolen, and sold into slavery in Virginia, where he found himself the property of a planter residing about four miles from Alexandria. He did not understand the art of reading or writing, but by a marvelous faculty was able to perform the most difficult calculations. Dr. Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia, Penn., in a letter addressed to a gentleman residing in Manchester, Eng., says that hearing of the phenomenal mathematical powers of "Negro Tom," he, in company with other gentlemen passing through Virginia, sent for him. One of the gentlemen asked him how many seconds a man of seventy years, some odd months, weeks, and days, had lived, he gave the exact number in a minute and a half. The gentleman took a pen, and after some figuring told Tom he must be mistaken, as the number was too great. "'Top, massa!" exclaimed Tom, "you hab left out de leap-years!" And sure enough, on including the leap-years in the calculation, the number given by Tom was correct.
"He was visited by William Hartshorn and Samuel Coates," says Mr. Needles, "of this city (Philadelphia), and gave correct answers to all their questions such as, How many seconds there are in a year and a half? In two minutes he answered 47,304,000. How many seconds in seventy years, seventeen days, twelve hours? In one minute and a half, 2,110,500,800."
That he was a prodigy, no one will question. He was the wonder of the age.
This short biography is drawn from George W. Williams's History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880, Volume 1 (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1883), pp. 399-400.
THOMAS FULLER, THE MATHEMATICIAN
Today no one knows exactly how Thomas Fuller performed his calculations. However, the algorithms he used were probably based on traditional African counting systems. The people of the Yoruba area of southwest Nigeria have a complex counting system with very high numbers that probably dates back to Fuller's time. Europeans arriving in the area were amazed at the complexity of Yoruba numeration. It is thought to have developed from counting the cowrie shells that were used for currency. Economic inflation may have raised the magnitude of the numbers to be counted. Yoruba numeration has a well-organized structure, base twenty with an intermediate base ten, that allows for easy calculation and has provisions for large numbers as multiples and powers of twenty. Yoruba also uses subtraction that is similar to the "IX" for nine in Roman numerals. For example, the numbers from fifteen to nineteen are expressed as subtractions from twenty, the base number. This may also help with calculation, since calculating with "twenty minus three" might be easier than dealing with seventeen.
We have additional evidence of superior calculation abilities on the coast of Benin from John Bardot's 1732 account of the abilities of the inhabitants of Fida (Fauvel & Gerdes, 1990):
The Fidasians are so expert in keeping their accompts [accounts], that they easily reckon as exact, and as quick by memory, as we can do with pen and ink, though the sum amount to never so many thousands: which very much facilitates the trade the Europeans have with them.
Drawn from an Article Thomas Fuller and his Calculation Ability , written by by Sarah J. Greenwald, Appalachian State University Boone, North Carolina; Amy Ksir, United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland; Lawrence H. Shirley, Towson University, Towson, Maryland. .
THOMAS FULLER, THE MATHEMATICIAN
The following appeared in several newspapers at the time of his death:
DIED, Negro Tom, the famous African calculator, aged 80 years. He was the property of Mrs. Elizabeth Cox, of Alexandria. Tom was a very black man. He was brought to this country at the age of fourteen, and was sold as a slave with many of his unfortunate countrymen. This man was a prodigy. Though he could neither read nor write, he had perfectly acquired the use of enumeration. He could give the number of months, days, weeks, hours, minutes, and seconds, for any period of time that a person chose to mention, allowing in his calculations for all the leap years that happened in the time. He would give the number of poles, yards, feet, inches, and barley-corns in a given distance say, the diameter of the earth's orbit and in every calculation he would produce the true answer in less time than ninety nine out of a hundred men would take with their pens. And what was, perhaps, more extraordinary, though interrupted in the progress of his calculations, and engaged in discourse upon any other subject, his operations were not thereby in the least deranged; he would go on where he left off, and could give any and all of the stages through which the calculation had passed.
Thus died Negro Tom, this untaught arithmetician, this untutored scholar. Had his opportunities of improvement been equal to those of thousands of his fellow-men, neither the Royal Society of London, the Academy of Science at Paris, nor even a Newton himself need have been ashamed to acknowledge him a brother in science.
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