The Mystery of a Lightnding Calculator.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLII, Issue 20, 19 May 1909, Page 61

The Mystery of a Lightnding Calculator.

The skill of certain rapid calculators has been a subject of wonder even for scientists. Through what mental mechanism do such extraordinary persons succeed in repeating from those armies of figures and make in a few seconds by some mysterious power calculations which would take any other person a great deal of time and serious attention? One lightning calculator is now in Paris. She is a young Greek, Mlle. Urenie Diamanti, and she has been examined carefully in scientific circles. M. Manouvrier, the eminent professor at the School of Anthropology, has tried to

solve the mystery. With Mlle. Diamanti’s help has succeeded, it is eaid. It was when she was seven years old that Mlle. Diamanti noticed her calculating powers. She is the sister of a famous calculator. The success of her brother incited her to cultivate her gift. M. Manouvrier has discovered that the power of visualisation of the young woman only exercises itself on figures, and that those figures appear to her with certain colours. Here, below, we give the name of the colours, with which she associates the figures:—o, white; 1, black; 2, brilliant yellow; 3, Vermillion; 4, dark brown; 5, bright blue; 6, dark yellow; 7, navy blue; 8, grey, 9, chestnut, Mlle. Diamanti declares that she remembers better the figures which contain bright colours between darker ones. She believes that in that case the association of the colours with the figures helps memory. For instance, 104 (black, white, dark ■brown) is easy to learn and memorise because 0, which is white, is placed between two dark colours. In a similar way, 129 (black, bright yellow and chestnut) is also ea-.v to remember because of the contrasts. The process mentally used by Mlle. Diamanti Is the following: — Five rows of five figures being written ou a blackboard she looks at the square of 25 figures for a minute, turns her back to the blackboard, and recites the square in any possible way—horizontally, ver-

tically, diagonally, backwards, etc. She adds the five rows together; makes »Übstraction>, multiplications, squares any of the figures, etc. M. Manouvrier, after long observations, has found that the series of figure* are learned by heart. But here we come to the peculiarities which characterise the “visual" type of memory. As soon as they are learnt the figures appear to this young lady as written on a kind of imaginary tablean. That tableau i* made with the help of an unvarying scheme, and consists in th« visual represenUtior of the series of figures, farming a frame round an open space in which are projected all the figures of immediate interest, and in ■which, as it were, the various operations are made. Mlle. Diamanti “»»■" this tableau for the first time when she was fifteen. It has never altered since. “Someone tells me a figure, or when I think one,’’ she declared to M. Manouvrier, “I see it in the frame of tho tableau. But as soon as I have to use it, it detaches itself and places itself in ths centre.’’ She sees that tableau two or three steps before her, and it is of the rise of tile average blackboard. M. Manouvrier considers that this phenomenon, which has so often puzzled science, is derived from a great intensity of visualisation, helped by a retentive memory. “Any intelligent person, endowed with a good memory of the eye,” says M. Manouvrier, “could become, after a few months of training, a virtuoso of mental calculation.”