At the outset of their wanderings, President Wheelock, of Dartmouth College, offered to take the child and give him a thorough education, but the father declined the offer, not including even a honorarium for himself. In Boston a committee of wealthy gentlemen, headed by Josiah Quincy, offered to raise $5,000, one-half to be given to the father, the other moiety to be devoted to Zerah’s education, under their direction. The father acceded to this, but for some reason, when the contract of indenture was drawn, it was different in the important particular that the father and son were to be permitted to exhibit the lad publicly until the proceeds should amount to $5,000, when the sum was to be apportioned as before stipulated. This arrangement the father very properly rejected, and the negotiations failed. Wrong versions of this affair were published, imputing to the father the rejection of the genuine benefaction first proposed. That these reports injured him and their success thereafter wherever they went, the son always asseverated.
They now went on “a starring tour” through the country, meeting with varied success, and in the early spring of 1811 returned to Vermont with about $600 as the proceeds thereof. The elder Colburn gave $500 of this to the mother, which, for the next twelve years, was all he contributed to the family support—the family then consisting of six children under fourteen years of age.
From the first Zerah’s performance was confounding to all spectators. Mathematically, nothing seemed impossible to this child of six years. Being asked, “What is the number of seconds in 2,000 years?” he readily and accurately answered 63,072,000,000. Again, “What is the square of 1,449,” he answered, 2,099,601. More intricate calculations based on concrete facts, were equally easy, as “Suppose I have a corn-field in which are seven acres, having seventeen rows to each acre, sixty-four hills to each row, eight ears on a hill, and one hundred and fifty kernels on each ear, how many kernels in the corn-field?” The answer, 9,139,200 kernels, came readily. Asked what sum multiplied by itself will produce 998,001, he replied in four seconds, 999; and in twenty seconds produced the correct answer to “How many days and hours have lapsed since the Christian era began?” viz.: 661,015 days, 15,864,360 hours. He gave the answer to this: What is the square of 999,999×49×25; the answer requires seventeen figures to express it. Being asked what are the factors of 247,483 he made this reply: “941 and 263, and these are the only factors.” How could he know that?
These operations seemed the automatic action of mental power allied to instinct rather than to reason. The child had had absolutely no education in numbers and could neither read nor write; he would scarcely interrupt his infantile play to make his calculations. It was not till the spring of 1811 that he learned the names and the powers of the nine digits when written, and this he learned from a stranger who seemed to take this much more interest in his education than his father had ever taken. He was at this time a bright, playful, healthy boy. He answered mere puzzling questions with more than the ordinary shrewdness of his age, as, “Which is the greater, six dozen dozen or half a dozen dozen?” “Which is greater, twice twenty-five or twice five-and-twenty?” “How many black beans make six white ones?” He answered quickly, “Six—if you skin ’em.” During his calculations he would twist and contort like one in St. Vitus’ dance. If asked, as he often was, his method of calculation, he would cry at the annoyance of attempting to explain.
In April, 1811, father and son went to England, the child then being six and a half years old. The father tried (in vain, of course) to induce his wife to put their five little ones out in care of the neighbors and go abroad with him! Then, as at all other times, she seems to have monopolized the wit of the family. The same one-sidedness may have been detected in other families, for aught I know to the contrary.
In England he at first created a marked sensation. His receptions were attended by wondering multitudes, among them being members of the nobility and royal family and distinguished scientists and literati. Among his achievements at this time was to multiply the number eight by itself up to the sixteenth power, giving the inconceivable result, 281,474,976,710,656. He extracted the square and cube roots of large numbers by a flash of his genius. It had been laid down by mathematicians that no rule existed for finding the factors of numbers, but at the age of nine Zerah made such a rule; it was nearly as difficult to understand as his performance, however. Under this formula he gave the factors of 171,395, viz.: 5×34279; 7×22485; 59×2905; 83×2065; 35×4897; 295×581; 413×415. “It had been asserted,” he says, “by a French mathematician that 4294967297 is a prime number; but the celebrated Euler detected the error by discovering that it is equal to 641×6,700,417. The same number was proposed to this child, who found out the factors by the mere operation of his mind.”
The father was now happy. He was in the enjoyment of means and distinction through his child, all of which, with the usual conceit of a father, he arrogated to himself as the due reward of merit for having been the prodigious progenitor of so remarkable a child. Various money-making enterprises were started in connection with the “show,” from which others seemed to derive as much benefit as the father. Sir James Mackintosh, Sir Humphrey Davy (inventor of the safety lamp) and Basil Montague became a committee to superintend the publication of a book about the child; but though several hundred subscribers were obtained, many of whom paid in advance, the work was never published. A meeting of distinguished gentlemen was held to devise a scheme for his special education, which should develop his genius into a prodigy of matured intellectual powers, such as the world had never conceived. But all these plans were defeated by two circumstances—the boy’s general incapacity and the father’s special rapacity.
The “show business” seemed to be the elder Colburn’s forté and he took the boy on exhibition to Scotland and Ireland, and finally to Paris (1814). Here, too, the extraordinary interest in his extraordinary faculty resulted in a project for his proper education—La Place, the author of “Méchanique Celeste,” and Guizot, the historian, being conspicuous in his interest. It resulted in his being given a scholarship in the Lyceum by order of Napoleon, just then back from Elba on his little excursion to re-resubjugate the world; this intervention in behalf of the boy being one creditable act of his brief restoration, at least. The lad showed his gratitude to his imperial patron by ardently assisting in the entrenchments thrown up to resist the attack of the allied armies on Paris after the defeat at Waterloo.
The London admirers, spurred by pique at the French interest in and control of the boy, and by the father’s importunities, set about raising a purse to bring Zerah back and educate him in England. In furtherance of the enterprise, the father took his boy from the Lyceum and brought him to London in February, 1816. But this scheme fell through, owing, it is charged, to dissatisfaction with the father’s demand of a large endowment to himself as well as for the child; and soon both were living in poverty, unheeded and deserted.
In a fortunate moment the Earl of Bristol interested himself in young Colburn and made a provision of $620 a year for his education at Westminster school, where he was regularly entered, being then a few days over twelve years old. Here he spent two years and nine months. Though he made creditable progress in languages he disappointed those who had built expectations on his peculiar powers, by revolting against higher mathematics. It was found, in fact, that his special faculty was less susceptible of discipline than is the ordinary mathematical power of other youth.