The Kingdom of Fingers

JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post

"The Fingers as an Aid in Multiplication" is another wonderful find coming from a general browse in the great Scientific American (October 22, 1898, page 265). It is an interesting article, using the fingers so that the multiplication tables didn't have to be memorized by kids--I think that they absolutely should be--but the images taken out of context can also be regarded in some sense for this blog's "Found Absurdist" series.  (We are told that the system was devised by "a Polish mathematician", Procopovitch--he is repeatedly referred to as "the Polish mathematician".)

• See "Digital “Computers 1450-1750: Memory and Calculating on the Fingers and Hands", a post on this blog from 2008, here.

A detail from: