Bidder, George Parker. "On Mental Calculation", pp 251-280, in Minutes of Proceedings of he Institution of Civil Engineers with Abstracts of the Discussions, volume XV, Session 1855-6, London, published by the Institution, 540pp. Rebound in a sturdy library cloth (ca. 1970). A very nice, very sturdy and crisp copy. Ex-library, with the library name perforated on the title page and also rubber stamp on the text block ends at top of bottom. Still, a very nice copy. $250
George Parker Bidder (1806-1878) gave a lecture (without notes) explaining to the audience at the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1856 his interior practices and habits in performing absolutely prodigious and complex arithmetical feats entirely in his head. He was among the first tier of performing human calculators (like Zerah Colburn, b. 1804) mental calculations enchanted large audiences from the stages, answering seemingly impossible questions with accuracy and speed. It is in the 1856 paper (which Martin Gardner refers to as "historic" and "valuable"in his article "Mathematical Games", in Scientific American, 216/4, April 1967, p. 117. ) that he relates some of the practices which clarify his process--for example, one large element was that he would keep one fact in his head at a time, until it was finished, and then move on. Of course for people who did not have anything even remotely resembling this impossible ability, the information is interesting, though I have no idea how useful it may be...unless you were already a savant, that is. Some things are just not to be known by mere mortals. Like the probably-apocryphal story of someone asking Hans Bethe how Richard Feynman had solved--on his feet--some impossible something, and Bethe responds: "First he thinks very very hard....and then he gets the answer".) Something like that.
Also of some high interest in this volume:
John William Heinke, "On Improvement in Diving Dresses for Working Under Water", pp 309-348. This paper is of some consideration, and is somewhat complicated in presentation, but the bottom line here is that Heinke writes about his new diving helmet and "dress" and their evidently famous Parisian test trials of 1855. Heinke was perhaps the leading figure in this area, especially it seems in the design of the helmet (of which there are three text illustrations). It seems as tough Heinke included this paper in its entirety in his History of Diving... which was published in 1871.
Evan Hopkins. "On the Vertical Structure of the Primary Rocks and the General Character of their Gold-bearing Varieties", pp 48-74, with a folding plate of geological profiles.
Henry Robinson, "On the Past and Present Condition of the River Thames", pp 195-250;
Frederick M. Kelley, "On the Junction of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and the Practicability of a Ship Canal, without Locks, by the Valley of the Atrato", pp376-417, with a large folding map.
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