[143] William George Horner (1786-1837) acquired a name for himself in mathematics in a curious manner. He was not a university man nor was he a mathematician of any standing. He taught school near Bristol and at Bath, and seems to have stumbled upon his ingenious method for finding the approximate roots of numerical higher equations, including as a special case the extracting of the various roots of numbers. Davies Gilbert presented the method to the Royal Society in 1819, and it was reprinted in the Ladies' Diary for 1838, and in the Mathematician in 1843. The method was original as far as Horner was concerned, but it is practically identical with the one used by the Chinese algebraist Ch'in Chiu-shang, in his Su-shu Chiu-chang of 1247. But even Ch'in Chiu-shang can hardly be called the discoverer of the method since it is merely the extension of a process for root extracting that appeared in the Chiu-chang Suan-shu of the second century B. C.
[144] He afterwards edited Loftus's Inland Revenue Officers' Manual (London, 1865). The two equations mentioned were x3 - 2x = 5 and y3 - 90y2 + 2500y - 16,000 = 0, in which y = 30 - 10x. Hence each place of y is the complement of the following place of x with respect to 9.
[145] Probably the John Power Hicks who wrote a memoir on T. H. Key, London, 1893.
[146] Possibly the one who wrote on the quadrature of the circle in 1881.
[147] As it is. But what a pity that we have not 12 fingers, with duodecimal fractions instead of decimals! We should then have 0.6 for ½, 0.4 for ⅓, 0.8 for ⅔, 0.3 for ¼, 0.9 for ¾, and 0.16 for ⅛, instead of 0.5, 0.333+, 0.666+, 0.25, 0.75, and 0.125 as we now have with our decimal system. In other words, the most frequently used fractions in business would be much more easily represented on the duodecimal scale than on the decimal scale that we now use.
[148] He wrote Hints for an Essay on Anemology and Ombrology (London, 1839-40) and The Music of the Eye (London, 1831).
[149] Brigham Young (1801-1877) was born at Whitingham, Vermont, and entered the Mormon church in 1832. In 1840 he was sent as a missionary to England. After the death of Joseph Smith he became president of the Mormons (1847), leading the church to Salt Lake City (1848).
[150] Joseph Smith (1805-1844) was also born in Vermont, and was four years the junior of Brigham Young. The Book of Mormon appeared in 1827, and the church was founded in 1830. He was murdered in 1844.
[151] Orson Pratt (1811-1881) was one of the twelve apostles of the Mormon Church (1835), and made several missionary journeys to England. He was professor of mathematics in the University of Deseret (the Mormon name for Utah). Besides the paper mentioned Pratt wrote the Divine Authenticity of the Book of Mormon (1849), Cubic and Biquadratic Equations (1866), and a Key to the Universe (1866).
[152] "It does not follow."