GASTON PLANTE.
At the Paris Electrical Exhibition in 1881, Planté received a Diploma of Honor, the highest distinction conferred, while in the same year the Academy of Sciences voted him the "Lacaze" prize, and the Society for the Encouragement of National Industry presented him with the "Ampère" medal, its highest award.
Planté deserves not only the honors conferred upon him by his own country, but those of the world on account of his cosmopolitan character--a rarity among his countrymen. He sends his apparatus to all exhibitions of any consequence; they appeared at Munich and Vienna, where their interpretation by the attendant added considerably to the renown of their author.--Zeitch f. Elektrotechnik.
WARREN COLBURN.
Warren Colburn, the eminent American mathematician, was born in Dedham, Mass., March 1, 1793.
He was the eldest son of a large family of children. His parents were poor, and "Warren" was, during his childhood, frequently employed in different manufacturing establishments to aid the family by his small earnings.
In early boyhood he manifested an unusual taste for mathematics, and in the common district school was regarded as remarkable in this department. He learned the trade of a machinist, studying winters, until he was over twenty-two years of age, when he began to fit for Harvard College, which he entered in 1817 and graduated with high honors in 1820. He taught school in the winter months, while in college, in Boston, Leominster, and in Canton, Mass. From 1820 to 1823 he taught a select school in Boston.
While in college he was regarded as by far the best mathematician in his class, and during this period thought there was the necessity for such a book as his "First Lessons in Intellectual Arithmetic." This conviction had been forced upon his mind by his experience in teaching. In the autumn of 1821 he published his "first edition." His plan was well digested, although he was accustomed to say that "the pupils who were under his tuition made his arithmetic for him;" that the questions they asked and the necessary answers and explanations which he gave in reply were embodied in the book, which has had a sale unprecedented for any book on elementary arithmetic in the world, having reached over 2,000,000 copies in this country, and the sale still continues, both in this country and in Great Britain. It has been translated into most of the European languages and by missionaries into many Asiatic languages.