The Amazing Lightning Calculators: The Natural Number Crunchers

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Vito Mangiamele, son of a Sicilian shepherd, was a 19th century arithmetical wonder with a limited education. In less than a minute he could tell a questioner that the cube root of 3,796,416 was 156. (The larger number is equal to 156 X 156 x 156.) This he did as a child of 10, under examination before the French Academy of Sciences. Even more amazingly, he was able to calculate the 10th root of 282,475,249 in his head. (The answer is 7.)

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

Scientific Genius: Carl Friedrich Gauss (above) was a lightning calculator who went on to become a brilliant scientist and mathematician.

Some calculating prodigies have been gifted mathematicians. Carl Friedrich Gauss, who was born in 1777, was one of the world’s most remarkable mathematical geniuses. His brilliant aptitude for figures was evident from an early age. On his first day in an arithmetic class at school he provided the answers to a series of problem before the teacher had finished dictating them. He published his theory of numbers in 1801 and later became a foremost mathematician of his age.

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Born in 1887, Srinivasa Ramnujan was an Indian mathematician with extraordinary abilities in manipulating numbers. On one occasion his fellow mathematician G.H. Hardy recalled the time that he visited Ramnujan in the Hospital. Hardy said that his taxicab had the number 1729, and remarked that it was a very dull number.

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Ramnujan instantly replied that it was in fact very interesting: it was the smallest number that could be expressed as the sum of two cubes and in two different ways (as 12 cubed plus 1 cubed or as 10 cubed plus 9 cubed).

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Calculating Prodigy:  During the 1880’s young Jacques Inaudi (on the poster at above) traveled all over Europe and the United States to demonstrate his remarkable agility with mental arithmetic. A typical performance involved completing five complex calculations in only 10 minutes. Inaudi would stand with his back to the blackboard. As members of the audience called out numbers, his manager would write them on a blackboard in chalk and Inaudi would repeat them in order to engrave them on his mind before beginning his calculations

All in the Head

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Such calculating geniuses have sometimes been of service to mathematicians as “human computers.” One 19th century prodigy, Zacharias Dase, could multiply 100-digit numbers together mentally and create mathematical tables with the greatest of ease. Yet Dase was not able to comprehend even the most rudimentary of mathematical formulas. The Hamburg Academy of Sciences gave him financial support to create further mathematical tables that would shorten the labors of his fellow mathematicians and scientists.

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Lightning calculators have not been able to explain their gifts, but they seem to share some common traits. When confronted with numerical calculations, they posses exceptionally capacious memories and demonstrate remarkably rapid recall. Such arithmetical ability enables them to carry out complicated calculations without pen or paper and remember the results for use in future problems.

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It seems that most have been left-handed. Left-handed people rely more on the right hemisphere of the brain, which controls spatial judgment, perception, intuition, and artistic ability. Perhaps the secret of the lightning calculators lies there.