THE STORY OF THOMAS FULLER, A MAN WHOSE MATHEMATICAL ABILITIES SHOCKED PEOPLE.

in #steemiteducation6 years ago

Thomas Fuller, recognizably known as the Negro Tom" and the "Virginia Calculator" was a native of Africa. He was born in 1710 in Africa, at fourteen years old he was stolen, and sold into slavery in Virginia in 1724, where he served his master who was a farmer.

image
source

Fuller was an illiterate as he couldn't read and write English, however he had an uncommon blessing; the capacity to give exact and quick calculation, which for such a large number of years shocked the colonizers. He essentially could solve complex math issues in his mind.

Antislavery campaigners who had perceived his uncommon ability utilized him to drive home the point that blacks were not rationally substandard compared to whites.

Northern Virginia farmers, Presley and Elizabeth Cox, likewise utilized Fuller's talent in the administration of their farm, around four miles from Alexandria, Virginia.

image
source

Thomas fuller when asked said that his skills originate from trial applications around the farm, for example, counting the hairs in a cow's tail.

Complex calculations identified with stargazing are completed by a computer yet Fuller was incredibly able to do those calculations in his mind.

He was invited by William Hartshorn and Samuel Coates," says Mr. Needles, "of this city (Philadelphia), and he gave rectify answers to every one of their question, for example, how many seconds there are in 18 months? In two minutes he answered 47,304,000. He was asked the second mathematical question which is how many seconds in seventy years, seventeen days, twelve hours? and to their greatest surprise, it just took him one minute and a half to answered 2,110,500,800."

image
source

He was a wonder, nobody will question. He was the ponder of the age. The accompanying showed up in a few daily papers at the season of his death.

Exhibit day thinking is that Fuller figured out how to calculate in Africa before he was brought to the United States as a slave. Supporting confirmation for this originates from an entry composed by Thomas Clarkson in 1788 portraying the buy of African slaves. Fuller died on the Cox cultivate close to Alexandria, Virginia in 1790. He was 80.

REFERENCES

image

Sort: